OI 


1 1     i  .i  1 1... 

"  JOSEPH    M.    M.   GRAY 


Ml 

u 

m 

V 


OCT  4  1915 


BR  479  .G73  1915 

Gray,  Joseph  M.  M. ,  1877-   1 

The  old  faith  in  the  new  da^ 


And  all  is  well,  tho*  faith  and  form 
Be  sundered  in  the  night  of  fear; 
Well  roars  the  storm  to  those  that  hear 

A  deeper  voice  across  the  storm. 

— Tennyson. 


THE  OLD  FAITH 
IN  THE  NEW  DAY 


JOSEPH  M.  M.  GRAY 


THE   ABINGDON   PRESS 

NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1915,  by 
JOSEPH  M.  M.  GRAY 

The  Bible  text  used  in  this  volume  is  taken  from 

the   American  Standard  Edition  of  the 

Revised  Bible,  copyright,  1901,  by 

Thomas  Nelson  &  Sons,  and 

is  used  by  permission. 


TO 

MY   FATHER 

A  PREACHER  OF  THE  OLD  FAITH 

IN  A  FORMER  DAY 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

Preface 9 

I.    Our  Indispensable  Inheritance 11 

II.    The  Modern  Increment 35 

III.     The  Increasing  Christ 93 

IW.    The  Vindicated  Scriptures 131 

V.     Concerning  the  Church 171 

VI.    An  Adequate  Evangel 215 


PREFACE 

No  man  can  claim  imperative  necessity 
for  a  new  book  on  a  theme  as  frequently 
treated  as  that  of  the  present  volume.  In 
this  particular  case  the  author  does  not  so 
much  as  recall  that  anyone  has  asked  him  to 
publish  his  views,  so  that  even  the  polite  and 
once  popular  fiction  of  being  urged  by  his 
friends  is  denied  him.  There  is,  however, 
the  extenuating  fact  that  books  are  by  no 
means  like  living  people:  bad  ones  do  not 
crowd  their  betters  out  of  the  way;  so  that 
no  other  volume  is  likely  to  be  despoiled  of 
its  deserts  by  this  one.  The  following  chap- 
ters embody  the  conclusions  which  some  fif- 
teen years  of  active  ministry,  in  three  quite 
characteristic  and  representative  cities, 
have  brought  to  the  author;  and  the  sub- 
stance of  them  having  been  received  with 
gratifying  response  by  gatherings  of  min- 
isters and  laymen  of  his  own  denomination, 
and   others,   he   ventures  to   present   them 

9 


10  PREFACE 

somewhat  more  fully  in  this  less  fugitive 
form. 

If  the  reader  feels  any  irregularities  of 
style  or  disconnections  of  spirit  between  the 
chapters,  it  is  due  to  say  that  they  have 
been  written  at  such  times  as  the  author 
could  get  and  not  in  the  congenial  leisure 
of  which  books  are  presumably  the  product. 
He  has  written  in  a  downtown  office  amid 
the  roar  of  a  city's  life,  on  trains,  in  still 
watches  of  the  night,  and  during  sunmier 
days  beside  the  sea.  But  whatever  may 
be  the  discrepancies  of  achievement,  his 
purpose  has  been  single,  namely,  to  pro- 
voke his  brethren  of  the  ministry  to  some 
insights  into  our  common  faith  and  its 
present-day  factors,  which  shall  lead  them 
toward  that  larger  certainty  and  usefulness 
the  Church  and  the  age  alike  demand.  If 
what  he  has  written  shall  accomplish  such 
a  result,  it  will  be  of  little  importance 
whether  his  specific  conclusions  are  accepted 
or  rejected;  his  purpose  in  their  publication 
will  have  been  obtained. 

Kansas  City,  Missouri. 


I 

OUR  INDISPENSABLE 
INHERITANCE 


You  see  the  great  breaker  that  comes  with 
its  white  crest  rolling  in  upon  the  beach.  How 
fine  it  is!  It  is  the  vanguard  of  the  incoming 
tide,  but  wherein  lies  the  explanation  of  its  career? 
It  is  in  the  momentum  of  the  sea  behind  it.  It 
would  not  come,  it  would  not  rise,  it  would  not 
break,  it  would  not  creep  up  the  beach,  if  it  were 
not  for  the  roll  and  swell  of  the  mighty  sea  behind 
it;  and  our  farthest  reach  to-day  is  chiefly  because 
of  the  swell  of  the  humanity  that  is  behind  us. 

If  we  are  doing  nothing  noble  ourselves,  and 
if  we  care  nothing  for  what  serious  men  are  doing 
to-day,  it  is  impossible  that  any  part  of  the  past 
should  appear  great  to  us.  Because  men  and 
women  love  now,  they  turn  with  eagerness  to  the 
glorious  lovers  in  generations  gone  by;  because 
men  and  women  toil,  struggle,  hope,  fear,  rejoice 
and  weep  to-day,  they  wish  to  know  of  others 
greater  than  themselves  who  went  the  same  wild 
mysterious  way.  Earnestness  in  the  conduct  of 
one's  own  life  is  the  indispensable  condition  of 
any  deep  and  true  appreciation  of  the  past. — 
Gordon:  Revelation  and  the  Ideal,  pp.  108,  284. 


CHAPTER  I 

OUR  INDISPENSABLE 
INHERITANCE 

In  certain  very  clearly  marked  respects 
the  age  in  which  we  live  is  the  most  notable 
of  human  history.  The  one  hundred  years 
and  more  which  have  just  passed  have 
witnessed  the  most  rapid  and  marvelous 
changes  in  society  and  life  accomplished  in 
any  period  of  time.  Up  to  the  year  1800 
there  had  been  made  seven  great  discov- 
eries or  inventions;  in  the  century  imme- 
diately following  there  were  added  thirteen 
more.  In  these  one  hundred  years  human- 
ity passed  from  the  stage  coach  to  the 
limited  express,  from  the  sailing  vessel  to 
the  Mauretania,  from  hand-to-hand  conflicts 
beneath  the  flapping  canvas  of  wooden 
frigates  to  the  floating  fortresses  of  our 
modern  navies  with  their  incredibly  destruc- 
tive power;  from  tedious  letter-writing  and 
irregular  mails  to  intercontinental  cables 
and  marconigrams ;  from  the  silhouette  to 

13 


14  THE  OLD  FAITH 

the  photograph;  from  the  letter  press  to 
the  graphophone;  from  the  pantomime  to 
the  moving  picture;  from  M.  Lecocq  to  the 
dictograph.  In  this  century  medicine  rose 
from  guess-work  diagnosis  and  surgical 
atrocities  to  the  X-ray  and  anaesthesia,  the 
whole  healing  science  being  revolutionized 
by  the  advances  of  the  past  fifty  years. 
Within  the  memory  of  men  who  have  not 
yet  voted,  wireless  telegraphy  has  been 
developed  to  scientific  and  commercial  suc- 
cess, the  aeroplane  has  passed  from  the 
dream  to  the  practical  deed,  and  the  poles 
of  the  earth  have  been  discovered.  In 
world-politics  have  occurred  changes  so 
great  that  they  are  not  yet  fully  compre- 
hended. Japan  has  become  a  world-power, 
China  a  republic,  and  the  United  States  has 
colonies  in  the  Pacific  Ocean  and  the  Car- 
ibbean Sea.  Within  our  own  land  society 
has  made  amazing  advances  from  the  polit- 
ical axioms  of  its  founders.  In  these  one 
hundred  and  fifteen  years  it  has  moved 
from  the  narrowest  interpretations  of 
representative  government  to  the  broadest 
popular   democracy;    from   Negro   slavery 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  15 

to  a  most  inclusive  theoretical  equality 
before  the  law;  from  the  seclusion  and  lim- 
itation of  women  to  women's  suffrage. 

"Nothing  in  it  (the  nineteenth  century) 
was  quite  so  picturesque  as  the  discovery 
of  America,  or  the  circumnavigation  of 
the  globe,  nor  quite  so  revolutionary  as  the 
astronomy  of  Copernicus,  and  nothing  so 
beautiful  was  produced  as  a  Greek  Venus 
or  a  Gothic  cathedral,  but  it  invaded  more 
fields,  it  destroyed  more  traditions,  it  made 
more  discoveries,  it  did  more  constructive 
work,  and,  in  all  the  range  from  the  work- 
shop to  the  library,  it  scattered  its  bounties 
with  the  lavish  hand  of  enrichment."  ^  The 
peril  of  an  age  so  enriched  and  so  trans- 
formed is  the  peril  of  every  swiftly  moving 
generation,  namely,  an  impatience  with 
what  has  preceded  it.  In  1835  Joseph 
Mazzini  wrote:  "What  we  have  to  do  is 
to  fix  our  eyes  upon  the  future  while  we 
break  the  last  links  of  the  chain  that  binds 
us  to  the  past.  .  .  .  We  have  emancipated 
ourselves  from  the  abuses  of  the  past;  let 
us    now    emancipate    ourselves    from    its 

>  Samuel  George  Smith:  Democracy  and  the  Church,  p.  272. 


16  THE  OLD  FAITH 

glories."  ^  With  the  particular  conditions 
and  specific  import  which  Mazzini  had  in 
mind,  that  may  have  been  a  fitting  declara- 
tion; but  the  literal  meaning,  too  widely- 
avowed  now  and  particularly  in  respect  of 
religious  ideas,  leads  to  personal  and  social 
disaster. 

There  is,  as  we  all  recognize,  a  danger- 
ous clinging  to  the  past.  "It  were  better 
to  have  no  history  than  to  have  the  most 
splendid  of  its  years  to  be  but  a  succession 
of  iron  bands."  ^  But  that  is  not  the  only 
alternative.  History  is  not  law,  it  is  life; 
life  that  has  been  fresh  and  vigorous  and 
human  as  our  own.  The  past  is  not  a  geo- 
graphical area  which  we  can  cut  away  with 
a  stroke  or  isolate  wholesale  as  map-makers 
discriminate  States  or  countries  by  print- 
ing them  in  different  colors.  The  past  is 
the  undying  tree,  vast  and  mighty,  with 
great  roots  that  reach  far  down  to  the  be- 
ginnings of  things,  the  undying  tree  of 
which  our  day  is  but  the  latest  bit  of  new 
branch,  passing  into  the  old  even  as  to- 

1  Essays:  Camelot  Edition,  p.  41. 

'  Fairbairn:  Studies  in  Religion  and  Theology,  p.  49. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  17 

morrow  comes.  And  all  that  we  hold  rich 
and  beautiful  and  good  has  its  beginnings 
in  this  past,  of  which  we  ourselves  are  al- 
ready becoming  a  part.  "All  that  we 
possess,"  wrote  David  Swing,  "has  come  to 
us  by  way  of  a  long  path.  There  is  no 
instantaneous  liberty  or  wisdom  or  lan- 
guage or  beauty  or  religion.  Old  philos- 
ophies, old  agriculture,  old  domestic  arts, 
old  sciences,  medicine,  chemistry,  astron- 
omy, old  modes  of  travel  and  commerce, 
old  forms  of  government  and  religion  have 
all  come  in  gracefully  or  ungracefully  and 
have  said  'Progress  is  king,  and  long  live 
the  king!' "^ 

We  stand  to-day  in  the  flush  of  a  new 
and  expanding  civilization.  The  glamour 
of  great  deeds  our  brothers  everywhere  are 
doing  shines  upon  our  eyes.  The  conceit 
of  the  contemporaneous  is  on  us.  In  an 
age  of  great  wealth,  great  armies,  great 
industries,  great  inventions,  and  great 
achievements  in  the  realms  of  natural  and 
applied  science,  we  are  too  prone  to  look 
upon  all  other  generations  with  impatience, 

>  Quoted  by  Hillis:  Investment  of  Influence,  p.  111. 


18  THE  OLD  FAITH 

and  regard  their  attainments  with  the  easy 
tolerance  of  an  obvious  superiority.  But  at 
most  the  distinctive  and  characteristic  ele- 
ments of  the  present  are  the  increment 
accumulating  upon  a  rich  and  splendid 
inheritance  from  a  noble  past.  It  is  that 
past  as  it  is  related  to  religion  which  forms 
the  subject  of  the  immediate  chapter. 

By  reason  of  the  religious  ideas  it  has 
bequeathed  us  the  past  is  the  first  effective 
influence  in  the  religion  of  to-day.  "The 
ancients,"  said  Sidney  Smith,  the  most 
noted  wit  of  the  early  nineteenth  century, 
"have  stolen  all  our  ideas." 

In  the  pride  of  modern  thought  we  are 
apt  to  forget  that  the  fundamental  concep- 
tions of  truth,  the  conceptions  which  we 
are  wont  to  consider  peculiarly  our  own, 
have  come  down  to  us  by  Professor  Swing's 
"way  of  a  long  path."  It  has  been  for  some 
recent  years  quite  the  fashion  to  descant 
about  the  Fatherhood  of  God;  and  some  of 
those  most  concerned  to  maintain  their 
position  as  advanced  and  liberal  thinkers 
iterate  their  allegiance  to  the  doctrine  as 
if  they  were  turning  over  a  new  leaf  in  the 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  19 

book  of  Revelation ;  but  the  Aryan  peoples, 
centuries  before  the  Christian  era,  had 
learned  to  look  to  the  bending  sky  above 
them  and  say,  "All-Father."  Our  age  has 
brought  to  the  thought  of  human  brother- 
hood a  new  emphasis,  and  government, 
literature,  the  Church,  industry,  philan- 
thropy, and  the  home  are  feeling  the  effects. 
But  there  is  not  a  modern  stress  or  passion, 
not  a  modern  sensitiveness  to  social  wrong 
or  vision  of  injustice;  there  is  not  a  modern 
recognition  of  the  inseparable  connection 
between  true  religion  and  its  expression  in 
the  life  of  society,  which  cannot  be  found 
in  the  pages  of  the  Hebrew  prophets.  Our 
generation  has  thought  that  it  was  a  dis- 
coverer, sailing  like  some  spiritual  Colum- 
bus to  find  a  new  passageway  of  religious 
and  social  substance  and  interpretation; 
instead  it  has  been  simply  a  belated  voyager 
landing  at  last  on  shores  that  braver  feet 
had  trodden  centuries  ago. 

The  popular  spirit  of  our  age  is  hostile 
to  the  creeds.  The  doctrinal  confessions  of 
the  Church,  torn  from  their  places  in  the 
great  movement  of  Christian  history,  are 


20  THE  OLD  FAITH 

flouted  by  the  present  daj^  The  noble 
affirmations  of  belief,  so  necessary  for  the 
very  life  of  the  Church  and  the  faith  in  the 
battle  days  of  early  heresy,  are  compla- 
cently regarded  as  curios  of  ancient  specula- 
tion, their  stately  language  held  to  be  a 
burdensome  fetter,  and  their  metaphysical 
discriminations  regarded  as  archaic  speci- 
mens of  hair-splitting  de  luooe,  "The  day 
of  the  creeds  is  passed,"  is  the  modern  cry. 
But  is  it  not  significant  that  the  substance 
of  the  creeds  is  not?  Amid  all  the  break- 
ing of  ancient  forms  and  the  rejection  of 
ancient  statements  and  interpretation,  the 
great  ideas  the  past  so  clearly  disengaged 
and  firmly  established  are  the  ideas  with 
which  the  modern  day  is  yet  concerned. 

Moreover,  these  ideas  of  the  past  have 
been  the  determining  factors  in  human  life. 
The  truths  of  religion  have  been  the  forces 
of  history.  "The  empire  of  Rome,"  said 
ex-President  Roosevelt  in  his  lecture  before 
Oxford  University  in  1910,  "is  the  most 
stupendous  fact  of  lay  history;  no  empire 
later  in  time  can  be  compared  with  it."  ^ 

» History  aa  Literature,  p,  78. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  21 

But  what  was  it  that  conquered  Europe 
and  transformed  Teuton  and  Slav  and 
Hun  and  Gaul  and  Goth  and  Saxon  from 
their  varied  savagery  into  their  better  civ- 
ilizations? Not  the  Roman  empire,  for  all 
the  tramp  of  her  undefeated  legions  and 
the  glisten  of  her  undipped  eagles  from  the 
Mediterranean  to  the  German  Ocean,  from 
the  vineyards  of  Hispania  to  the  beaches 
of  the  Black  Sea.  It  was  Christianity  that 
conquered  Europe,  the  great  ideas  trans- 
muted into  living  forces.  In  forest  and 
city,  on  peninsula  and  island,  the  Christian 
gospel  with  its  characteristic  ideas  went; 
they  met  Saracen  and  savage  on  the  battle- 
field and  fought  the  better  wars  of  peace 
in  hall  and  hut,  and  when  the  ancient  Ro- 
man empire  was  long  since  dead,  and  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire  but  a  fading  dream, 
the  constituent  ideas  of  Christianity  pos- 
sessed the  transformed  field.  We  may 
reject  and  alter  the  forms  in  which  those 
ideas  have  come  down  to  us,  but  the  ideas 
themselves  remain  with  undiminished  force 
and  unimpoverished  meaning.  As  one  of 
our  most  recent  writers  on  the  theme  has 


22  THE  OLD  FAITH 

finely  put  it,  "In  the  mighty  past  were 
fashioned  for  us  great  continents  of  faith, 
and  voyage  as  men  may  in  search  of  those 
islands  of  the  blest  about  which  they  dream, 
the  continents  will  still  remain  the  home  of 
their  largest  and  richest  life."  ^  We  do 
well  to  remember  these  things. 

Our  age  is  challenging  every  formula 
and  institution.  It  is  pushing  out  on  new 
areas  of  experience  and  endeavor.  It  is 
refashioning  its  beliefs  and  theories  and 
restating  its  ideals.  All  this  is  but  to  say 
that  it  is  a  living  age.  Its  impatience  with 
the  past  is,  in  a  measure,  proper.  We  must 
not  be  fettered  to  dead  men.  We  must  not 
be  imprisoned  in  outgrown  ideas.  We 
must  not  be  fed  upon  the  shells  of  truth 
from  which  the  substance  has  long  since 
withered.  But  while  it  is  progress  to  rebel 
against  the  bondage  of  ancient  forms,  it  is 
suicide  to  break  with  fundamental  and 
undying  truths. 

The  past  is  a  formative  influence  upon 
our  modern  religion  also  by  reason  of  the 
facts   and   experiences   which   it   furnishes 

1  Lyman:  Theology  and  Human  Problems,  p.  78. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  23 

with  which  we  interpret  the  facts  and  expe- 
riences of  our  own  Hfe.  Whether  we  accept 
the  facts  in  the  same  mood  as  the  men  of 
the  past  accepted  them,  whether  we  inter- 
pret our  experiences  in  the  way  in  which 
the  men  of  the  past  interpreted  their  expe- 
riences, is  not  important  for  the  truth  here. 
To  reject  the  interpretations  of  the  past  is 
nevertheless  to  use  the  past  in  making  our 
own  interpretation.  And  very  subtly,  but 
inevitably,  the  facts  and  experiences  which 
the  past  furnishes  have  their  part  in  de- 
termining our  attitude  toward  and  our  use 
of  the  facts  and  experiences  of  our  own  life. 
They  become  the  standards  by  or  against 
which  we  work  out  our  own  beliefs  and  con- 
duct. 

There  is  the  history  of  Israel,  her  rela- 
tions to  the  peoples  around  her,  and  the 
stages  in  her  own  development  from  the 
patriarchal  age  into  the  most  thorough- 
going and  articulated  theocracy  the  world 
has  known,  with  the  parallel  development 
out  of  the  current  Semitic  mythology  and 
belief  of  the  pure  monotheism  which  is 
Israel's  first  gift  to  humanity.     There  are 


24  THE  OLD  FAITH 

the  facts  of  her  internal  history,  the  build- 
ing of  the  nation,  the  growth  of  the  reli- 
gious system,  the  clearly  delineated  con- 
ceptions of  sacrifice,  the  social  problems 
which  find  preservation  in  the  pages  of  the 
prophets,  the  deepening  and  enriching  of 
Israel's  religion  and  life  by  events  of  war, 
catastrophe,  defeat,  and  exile  which  swept 
other  nations  into  atheism.  There  are  the 
profound  expositions  of  national  and  indi- 
vidual experience  accomplished  in  the 
psalms,  the  only  instance  in  all  human  his- 
tory and  literature  where  the  hymns  of  a 
single  people  have  become  the  choicest 
devotional  handbook  of  the  world  at  large. 
There  is  the  inscrutable  but  undeniable  fact 
of  Hebrew  prophecy,  especially  the  proph- 
ecy, not  of  one  man  or  of  one  age,  but 
of  many  men  of  all  ages,  of  a  Divine 
Saviour  who  should  come  upon  the  earth. 
Then  there  is  the  fact,  so  coincidental  as 
to  establish  the  case  for  miracle  itself,  the 
fact  of  the  New  Testament  history,  the  sub- 
lime ideals  and  instruction,  which,  for  all  the 
centuries  since  then,  have  remained  the 
supreme  word  for  personal  character  and 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  25 

conduct  and  hope.  In  that  history  is  the 
fragmentary  record  of  a  single  life,  which, 
with  only  this  fragment  recorded,  has  yet 
changed  the  course  of  all  succeeding  his- 
tory, revolutionized  the  standards  of  na- 
tional and  individual  behavior,  and  stamped 
its  imprint  on  every  institution  which  is 
characteristic  of  our  modern  civilization. 

Coming  for  a  moment  outside  of  the  his- 
tory peculiarly  recorded  in  the  Bible,  the 
past  shows  us,  in  secular  history,  engraved 
on  monuments  and  inscribed  in  brick  and 
block  and  parchment,  the  universal  prac- 
tice of  sacrifice  to  Deity  and  continuing  in 
the  inherited  customs  of  backward  peoples 
still  alive.  It  is  a  custom  inseparably  con- 
nected with  human  life  as  the  past  reveals 
it.  But  with  the  New  Testament  history 
the  past  advances  a  still  more  significant 
fact — that,  within  fifty  years  from  Calvary, 
considered  for  the  moment  as  simply  the 
place  of  a  Roman  execution,  the  ancient 
Hebrew  commonwealth  was  dead  forever, 
its  sacrificial  system  forever  passed  away; 
and  wherever  the  story  of  Calvary,  and  the 
interpretation  of  it  which  the  New  Testa- 


26  THE  OLD  FAITH 

ment  writings  make,  have  gone,  there  also, 
whatever  may  have  been  the  sacrificial  rites 
and  customs,  they  too  have  perished.  One 
other  fact  the  past,  in  this  connection, 
makes  very  plain — that  while  with  Calvary 
sacrifices  for  sin  ceased,  wherever  they  have 
thus  ceased  the  sense  of  sin  has  grown 
immeasurably  more  real  and  personally 
poignant. 

Added  to  its  service  as  supplying  thus 
the  facts  and  experiences  by  which  we  inter- 
pret our  own,  the  past  is  preeminently  influ- 
ential in  our  present  religion  because  of  the 
vindication  it  furnishes  of  the  religious 
ideas  it  has  bequeathed  us.  "What  makes 
any  part  of  history  great,"  writes  George 
A.  Gordon,  "is  the  revelation  it  contains  of 
the  moral  worth  of  man.  To  look  upon 
that  revelation,"  he  continues,  "it  is  not 
necessary  to  confine  attention  to  religious 
history."  ^  Here  is  the  lengthening  influ- 
ence of  the  past  upon  our  modern  religion 
and  religious  life.  It  lays  upon  us  the  con- 
straint of  the  increasing  moral  worth  of 
man  as  it  shows  us  the  great  adventures  of 

1  Witness  to  Immortality,  p.  277. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  27 

the  spirit  in  which,  from  age  to  age,  he  has 
participated.  Eveiy  event  in  the  unfold- 
ing of  that  moral  worth  has  been  a  link  in 
the  chain  which  binds  us  to  the  centuries 
which  have  fled.  What  mighty  deeds  have 
gone  to  that  unfolding!  Through  what 
emergencies  of  strength  and  sorrow,  of 
pain  and  pasion,  men  have  passed  in  the 
long  career  of  their  victorious  spiritual 
advance!  It  has  been  said  above,  that  the 
truths  of  religion  are  the  forces  of  history. 
In  what  fierce  and  splendid  enterprises  we 
see  these  truths  as  we  look  back  upon  the 
past  of  which  too  often  we  are  impatient! 
They  gleam  from  the  twilights  of  all  classic 
peoples  and  are  terribly  revealed  in  flames 
and  blood  at  the  beginning  of  our  Christian 
era.  They  shine  through  the  murk  and 
mist  of  the  empire  of  Constantine,  through 
the  black  night  of  the  Papal  Church  with 
its  unspeakable  enterprises  of  filth  and 
crime.  They  have  been  proven  and  prop- 
agated by  the  fires  of  the  martyrs  and  the 
agonies  of  the  Inquisition.  They  have  been 
demonstrated  in  huts  and  discovered  on 
thrones.     They  have  been  witnessed  by  the 


28  THE  OLD  FAITH 

fortitude  of  Puritans  and  the  fervor  of 
Wesleyans.  They  have  leavened  com- 
merce and  hberated  slaves  and  softened 
war.  They  look  out  upon  to-day  from  the 
windows  of  schools  and  colleges,  hospitals 
and  halls  of  legislation.  "We  are  in- 
debted," says  Dr.  S.  Parkes  Cadman,  "to 
the  men  and  women  who  have  wisely 
handled  our  yesterdays."  ^  They  have 
wrought  out  the  victory  of  the  religious 
ideas  we  have  acquired  and  in  their  expe- 
riences, passionate  and  tragic,  have  empow- 
ered the  truths  which  are  the  very  heart  of 
the  religion  of  to-day. 

Any  honest  inventory  of  the  religion  of 
to-day  must,  therefore,  acknowledge  an 
immeasurable  debt  to  the  days  that  have 
gone.  "The  notion  that  the  past  may  be 
ignored  and  forgotten  is  a  sure  recipe  for 
spiritual  smallness."  ^  And  the  greatness 
of  our  debt  to  it  and  the  graciousness  of 
its  influence  upon  us  are  felt  with  singular 
weight  when  we  take  account  of  the  great 
characters  of  the  past  with  which  the  his- 


1  Religious  Use  of  Memory,  p.  10. 

2  Lyman:  Theology  and  Human  Problems,  p.  109. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  29 

tory  of  religion  and  religious  thinking  is 
concerned.  "The  greatest  needs  of  us  all," 
Henry  Churchill  King  has  said,  "are  the 
contagion  of  high  and  significant  person- 
alities, and  the  opportunity  of  sharing  in 
their  best  visions."  ^  And  this  is  true,  and 
the  influence  of  these  high  and  significant 
personalities  is  powerful  and  beneficent, 
irrespective  of  our  agreement  with  their 
particular  interpretations  of  truth  or 
theories  of  life.  Interpretations  and  the- 
ories may  have  only  transient  value;  they 
may  be  constructive  and  profitable  for  a 
year  or  a  century,  and  then  be  outgrown; 
but  the  world  never  outgrows  a  great  char- 
acter. Dante's  theology  is  long  since  dead, 
but  Dante  is  a  living  force  to-day.  We  can 
look  back  with  amazement  and  something 
of  horror  at  the  logical  and  pitiless  conclu- 
sions of  Calvinism,  but  we  can  regard  Cal- 
vin with  nothing  less  than  abiding  rever- 
ence and  honor.  We  can  do  very  well  to- 
day without  the  particular  type  of  mind 
and  conception  of  the  Scriptures  which 
John  Bunyan  had,  but  we  can  never  get 

1  Religion  as  Life,  p.  105. 


30  THE  OLD  FAITH 

along  without  John  Bunyan  himself.  "The 
first  requisites  of  religion  and  civihzation," 
says  George  Adam  Smith,  "are  outstand- 
ing characters."  ^  There  are  some  signifi- 
cant personalities  whose  influence  is  so 
definitely  incarnate  in  the  work  they 
wrought,  the  discoveries  they  made,  the 
readjustment  of  ideas  they  compelled,  that 
their  value  to  the  world  is  irrespective  of 
their  personal  characters.  Such  a  man  was 
Charles  Darwin.  But  there  are  these 
others,  whose  contributions  to  religious 
thought  and  life,  vast  and  definite  as  they 
may  be,  are  utterly  dependent  on  their  per- 
sonalities. It  may  be  at  first  thought  diffi- 
cult, or  even  impossible,  to  define  in  concise 
statements  the  influence  these  characters 
have  brought  and  still  bring  to  our  latest 
religious  life,  but  one  has  only  to  name  their 
names  to  realize  the  impoverishment  which 
would  follow  if  they  could  be  struck  from 
off  the  record  of  the  past.  What  would  be 
the  condition  of  religion  to-day  without  the 
life  and  influence  of  Luther  or  Zwingli  or 
Knox?    Take  away  the  influence  of  Wesley 

1  Isaiah,  Vol.  I,  p.  251. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  31 

and  Whitefield,  of  George  Fox  and  Bishop 
Rutherford;  or,  coming  even  to  our  later 
generation,  take  away  the  character  and 
influence  of  Channing  and  Parker  and 
Robertson,  of  Dale  and  Beecher,  and  how 
impoverished  whatever  religion  we  would 
have  would  doubtless  be!  The  truth  here 
has  been  eloquently  expressed  by  Dr. 
Marineau:  "The  glorious  persons  of  human 
history,  imperishable  from  the  traditions 
of  every  civilized  people,  keeping  their 
sublime  glance  upon  the  Conscience  of 
ages,  create  the  unity  of  the  faith." 

There  are  those  who  insist  that  we  must 
remake  our  religion,  reconstruct  our  reli- 
gious ideas,  revolutionize  our  theology. 
They  have  the  attitude  of  men  who  would 
rebuild  a  house,  or  remold  some  metal  fig- 
ure; as  if  religion  were  some  malleable  sub- 
stance of  the  mind  to  be  handled  in  any 
fashion  the  vagrant  will  of  men  may  work. 
Religion  is  nothing  of  the  kind.  "Religion 
from  one  point  of  view  is  as  firm  as  the  ever- 
lasting hills;  from  another  point  of  view  it 
is  as  pliant  and  flexible  as  water,  which  flows 
freely    into    every    place    and    fills    everj'' 


32  THE  OLD  FAITH 

vessel,  no  matter  what  its  form  may  be."  ^ 
We  need  to  realize  the  firmness  as  well  as 
the  pliancy.  Like  life  itself,  which,  indeed, 
it  is,  religion  is  growth;  a  coordination  of 
thought,  conduct,  experience,  and  hope, 
developing  with  the  development  of  human 
interest.  It  can  be  directed  here,  restrained 
there,  enriched  in  this  fashion,  protected  in 
that;  its  wild  growths  may  be  cut  off,  its 
temporal  or  local  excrescences  removed,  its 
defects  remedied.  But  as  long  as  it  is  alive 
for  living  men  it  cannot  be  arbitrarily 
shaped  to  the  passing  moods  of  any  age 
without  regard  for  the  life  and  experiences 
of  the  mighty  past.  To  revert  to  a  former 
figure,  these  great  characters  of  years  gone 
by  have  been  husbandmen;  they  have 
pruned  and  protected;  they  have  developed 
its  neglected  branches,  they  have  fed  the 
withering  roots,  they  have  revived  its  parch- 
ing foliage,  they  have  fertilized  its  hostile 
soil,  they  have  built  around  it  mighty  bar- 
riers of  devotion  and  apology  to  defend  it 
from  the  storms  of  ignorance  and  the 
assaults  of  evil;  while,  of  all  the  glorious 

1  William  Boyd  Carpenter:  The  Witness  to  the  Influence  of  Christ,  p.  132. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  33 

persons  of  the  past  who  keep  their  sublime 
glance  upon  the  conscience  of  the  ages, 
"serenest  of  the  progeny  of  God"  is  He,  of 
whom  something  will  be  said  in  the  pages 
which  are  to  follow,  for  whom  are  all  things 
and  through  whom  are  all  things,  and  who, 
for  all  the  expanding  knowledge  and 
heightening  powers  of  men,  is  yet 

The  fountain  light  of  all  our  day, 
The  master  light  of  all  our  seeing. 


II 

THE  MODERN  INCREMENT 


No  other  century  that  we  are  able  to  survey 
was  so  full  of  such  glaring  contradictions  and  such 
sudden  changes,  as  the  nineteenth;  the  period 
which  commenced  about  the  eightieth  year  of 
the  eighteenth  century  and  has  just  closed.  In 
it  revolution  and  reaction  followed  one  another 
in  the  quickest  succession,  and,  while  the  masses 
sank  deeper  and  deeper  into  Materialism,  Atheism, 
and  even  Anarchism,  Orthodoxy  and  Ecclesiasticism 
reached  a  height  of  development  scarcely  con- 
ceivable at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

During  the  century  this  division  and  inner  con- 
fusion permeated  increasingly  the  public  life  of 
the  people:  all  were  engaged  in  conflict  to  obtain 
the  best  for  the  satisfaction  of  life's  needs.  The 
innermost  personal  life  of  men  became  chaotic, 
and  swayed  restlessly,  often  with  sudden  revolu- 
tion, from  the  spirit  of  the  Enlightenment  to  that 
of  the  Romantic  Reaction;  from  an  optimism, 
happy  in  the  enjoyment  of  civilization,  to  a  wear- 
iness of  life  so  great  as  to  make  men  desire  death. — 
Weinel  and  Widgery:  Jesus  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury and  After,  p.  32f. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  MODERN  INCREMENT 

Out  of  this  colossal  past,  religion,  with 
its  everlasting  firmness  and  its  sinuous  flex- 
ibility, poured  into  the  social  and  intellec- 
tual ferment  of  the  recent  generation.  To 
the  multitudinous  changes  wrought  in 
knowledge  and  experience  during  the  past 
century,  and  particularly  in  recent  years, 
it  could  not  be  indifferent.  As  all  the 
events  of  humanity  have  gone  to  form  it  in 
the  past,  so  all  the  events  of  humanity  to- 
day have  their  bearing  on  its  present.  "For 
us,"  wrote  Brierly,  "to  make  us  spiritually, 
were  the  first  beginnings  of  thought,  the 
making  of  alphabets,  the  making  of  liter- 
atures, the  struggles  of  patriots,  the  death 
of  martyrs,  the  creations  of  genius,  the  re- 
rearches  of  science,  the  whole  age-long 
struggle  of  the  world."  ^  It  is  a  truth  not 
of  the  past  tense  only.    The  practice  as  well 

1  J.  Brierly:  Religion  and  To-day,  p.  135. 

37 


38  THE  OLD  FAITH 

as  the  beginnings  of  thought,  the  use  as 
well  as  the  makings  of  alphabets  and  litera- 
tures, the  present  as  well  as  the  past 
struggle  of  the  world  is  making  us  spirit- 
ually. The  age  has  its  increment  as  well  as 
its  inheritance.  The  rapid  and  remarkable 
changes  in  thought,  life,  knowledge,  and 
activity  profoundly  affect  our  reception 
and  consideration  of  the  religion  which  the 
past  has  bequeathed  us.  President  Harris, 
of  Amherst  College,  put  the  truth  not  too 
strongly  when  he  said,  a  few  years  ago, 
that  the  Protestant  Reformation  itself  did 
not  work  a  greater  change  than  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century  has  marked  in  reli- 
gious thought,  belief,  and  life.^ 

Two  influences  may  be  discerned  in  these 
changes.  The  first  is  the  influence  of 
science.  The  application  of  new  knowl- 
edge to  machinery  is  visible  on  every  side, 
but  the  scientific  achievements  of  our  age 
are  far  more  extensive  than  mere  mechan- 
ism will  show.  The  astronomer  of  our  gen- 
eration not  only  weighs  and  measures  stars 
so  distant  that  light  traveling  186,000  miles 

1  Quoted  by  Henry  Churchill  King:  Religion  as  Life,  p.  116. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  39 

a  second  takes  years  to  reach  us,  but  he  tests 
their  chemical  composition  and  analyzes 
their  substance  as  if  he  held  their  dust 
within  his  hand.  At  the  other  extreme  is 
the  modern  physicist  dealing  with  specks  of 
matter  many  times  invisible  to  the  naked 
eye.  He  analyzes  one  of  these  specks,  to 
quote  a  leading  scientist  of  the  day,  "into 
billions  of  molecules;  and  dissects  each 
molecule  into  its  component  atoms;  and 
each  atom  into  a  miniature  planetary  sys- 
tem of  perhaps  eighteen  hundred  elec- 
trons." Then,  to  continue  the  quotation, 
he  "measures  these  unthinkably  minute 
units  of  matter;  weighs  them;  tests  the 
speed  of  their  flight  and  the  quantity 
and  quality  of  the  electric  charge  they 
bear."  ' 

To  go  no  farther  into  the  various  scien- 
tific activities,  but  to  speak  of  the  funda- 
mental discovery  which  has  most  affected 
modern  thought  and  life,  the  theory  of  evo- 
lution has  utterly  altered  our  outlook  on 
the  world  and  truth.  That  theorj^  is  now  so 
widely  known  in  its  general  outline  and  so 

1  Williams:  Miracles  of  Science,  p.  2, 


40  THE  OLD  FAITH 

thoroughly  accepted  that  it  needs  no 
explanation  here.  Though  evolutionists 
differ  among  themselves  as  to  the  way  in 
which  evolution  proceeds,  the  fundamental 
theory  is  an  axiom  of  modern  thought.  Its 
author,  Charles  Darwin,  as  S.  Parkes  Cad- 
man,  in  his  Brooklyn  Institute  lectures  in 
1910,  said,  "created  a  revolution  which  has 
had  no  equal  in  the  intellectual  history  of 
the  modern  world,  since  the  Renaissance 
and  the  Reformation."  ^  "Each  age," 
another  suggestive  thinker  has  written,  "is 
confronted  with  new  conditions,  but  our 
age  is  confronted  with  a  new  universe."  ^ 

Early  in  the  day  of  this  modern  science  it 
came  sheerly  into  conflict  with  religion.  Be- 
cause the  evidence  religion  offered  for  its 
characteristic  conclusions  was  not  of  the  kind 
and  quality  with  which  science  must  neces- 
sarily deal,  science  presumed  to  throw  reli- 
gion out  of  court.  Because  the  first  chap- 
ters of  Genesis  did  not  coincide  verbally 
with  the  precise  geological  history  of  the 
globe,  science  would  tell  us  that  the  entire 


» Charles  Daru-in  and  Other  English  Thinkers,  p.  42. 
2  Lyman:  Theology  and  Human  Problems,  p.  112. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  41 

Bible  was  unbelievable.  Because  the  solar 
system  of  the  patriarchs  and  the  psalmists 
and  Saint  Paul  did  not  tally  with  the  the- 
ory of  Copernicus  and  the  discoveries  of 
modern  solar  photography,  therefore  in- 
spiration was  a  cunningly  devised  fable. 
Because  biology  and  Darwinism  did  not 
confirm  the  biblical  account  of  the  creation 
of  animal  life,  therefore  the  whole  structure 
of  religious  thinking  must  come  down. 
Because  the  New  Testament  miracles 
seemed  to  contravene  the  laws  which  natural 
scientists  had  discovered  but  could  not 
explain,  therefore  the  New  Testament  had 
forfeited  its  usefulness  and  Christianity  was 
an  exploded  hallucination.  That  was  the 
first  challenge  of  modern  science. 

At  the  same  time  a  second  influence  was 
operative  on  the  age  in  which  these  changes 
were  taking  place — the  influence  of  demo- 
cracy. Eighteen  years  ago  Lord  Rose- 
bery  as  he  entered  upon  the  office  of  prime 
minister  of  England  said:  "I  believe  that 
the  people  are  now  inclined  to  think  that 
politics  is  not  merely  a  game  in  which  the 
pawns  have  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  knights 


42  THE  OLD  FAITH 

and  the  castles,  but  is  an  elevating  and  en- 
nobling effort  to  carry  into  .  .  .  practical 
life  the  principles  of  a  higher  morality. 
...  I  am  certain  that  there  is  a  party  in 
this  country  not  named  as  yet,  .  .  .  which  is 
inclined  to  say:  'A  plague  on  both  your 
Houses,  a  plague  on  all  your  parties,  a 
plague  on  all  your  politics,  a  plague  on  all 
your  unending  discussions,  which  yield  so 
little  fruit.  Have  done  with  this  unending 
talk  and  come  down  and  do  something  for 
the  people.'  "  ^  That  is  the  voice  of  democ- 
racy. It  had  spoken  before,  for  few  indeed 
have  been  the  periods  of  human  history  in 
which  some  voice  of  appeal  for  the  greater 
social  good  was  not  raised.  "Come  down 
and  do  something  for  the  people!"  That 
was  the  meaning  of  the  barons  beating  up 
around  King  John  at  Runnymede,  and  of 
the  Puritans  sadly,  but  without  flinching, 
bringing  Charles  to  the  block,  and  of  those 
whirlwind  days  that  stormed  around  the 
Tuileries  and  guillotined  a  Louis  and  an 
Antoinette    and    drenched    the    streets    of 


Quoted  by  Freeman  tie:  The  World  as   Subject  of  Redemption,  page 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  43 

Paris  in  the  blood  of  Bourbon  nobles.  It 
was  that  spirit  which  beat  back  Spain  from 
Holland  and  for  eighty  years  piled  up  the 
heroisms  of  the  Dutch  republic;  that  spirit 
which  hurried  James  the  Second  into  flight, 
turned  a  tax  on  tea  into  an  American  Revo- 
lution, and  shattered  the  sham  empire  of 
the  third  Napoleon.  It  was  not  altogether 
a  new  spirit  when  Lord  Rosebery  uttered 
it,  but  never  did  it  speak  so  clearly  and 
meet  so  hearty  a  response  as  it  does  to-day. 
To-day  the  democratic  spirit  is  vitaliz- 
ing, as  never  before,  all  the  social  ideals 
and  institutions  of  our  American  life.  In 
the  political  life  of  our  times  it  is  more 
effective  and  insistent  than  ever.  Govern- 
ment in  the  republic  used  to  be  a  matter 
confined  to  a  comparatively  few  individ- 
uals, and  one  of  the  more  instructive  spec- 
tacles of  the  day  is  the  survival  of  here  and 
there  a  man  of  large  affairs  holding  tena- 
ciously to  the  ancient  principle  that  the 
great  body  of  the  people  are  incompetent 
of  self-government.  To  cite  but  two  recent 
achievements  in  this  movement  toward 
complete  self-government,  the  substitution, 


44  THE  OLD  FAITH 

in  many  States,  of  the  primary  nomination 
for  the  convention  method  of  determining 
candidates  for  pubHc  office,  and  the  amend- 
ment to  the  constitution  providing  for  the 
election  of  United  States  senators  by  direct 
vote  of  the  people  instead  of  by  their  repre- 
sentatives in  State  legislatures,  are  indi- 
cations of  the  direction  in  which  we  are 
traveling.  But  they  are  only  indications. 
Government  is  becoming  more  and  more  a 
matter  not  of  parties  but  of  citizens.  It 
has  come  to  deal  more  and  more  not  only 
with  broad  federal  issues  such  as  the  tariff 
and  the  currency,  but  with  child  labor  and 
employers'  liability  and  the  like.  It  con- 
ceives its  function  to  be  not  a  business  of 
partisan  supremacy  only,  but  an  oppor- 
tunity of  popular  benefit.  It  establishes 
the  parcel  post  and  saves  the  public  from 
the  exorbitant  charges  of  the  private  ex- 
press companies;  it  inspects  food  and 
drugs,  takes  oversight  and  regulation  of 
manufactory  and  labor,  interests  itself  in 
the  conditions  in  which  miners,  seamen,  and 
mill  operatives  live  and  work.  It  studies 
the  conditions  of  country  life  with  a  view  to 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  45 

reviving  the  attractiveness  of  the  farm.  It 
becomes  a  general  counselor  to  the  farmer, 
fruit-grower,  and  stockman,  analyzing  the 
soil,  battling  with  disease  and  insect  pests, 
laying  before  any  man  who  wishes  it  the 
result  of  expert  experiment  and  knowledge 
in  the  realm  of  his  particular  interests.  It 
protects  game  birds  and  song  birds  and 
animals,  patrols  the  thinning  forests,  re- 
stocks the  depleted  waters,  and  fights,  with 
all  the  adjuncts  of  modern  science,  the 
enemies  of  useful  plant  and  animal  life. 
Through  its  consular  offices  and  special 
agents  it  carries  on  a  world-wide  scrutiny 
of  commercial  and  industrial  conditions,  so 
that  the  manufacturer  and  exporter  may 
best  be  served.  State  and  city  governments 
project  the  movement  further.  They  have 
boards  of  health  and  of  public  help,  factory 
inspection  and  housing  commissions,  public 
hospitals  and  dispensaries,  open-air  sani- 
toriums,  and  municipal  and  State  farms  for 
the  reclamation  of  the  incorrigible  youth — 
a  score  of  activities  issuing  in  the  safety, 
comfort,  and  prosperity  of  the  general 
public.    Much  yet  is  to  be  and  will  be  done. 


46  THE  OLD  FAITH 

The  just  coordination  of  capital  and  labor 
has  not  been  accomplished;  the  courts  are 
too  far  removed  from  sympathy  with  and 
accessibility  by  the  average  man  and  the 
very  poor;  the  will  of  the  people  is  too 
easily  subverted  from  its  social  aim.  But 
the  spirit  of  democracy,  the  come-down- 
and-do-something-for-the-people  spirit,  is 
pushing  slowly  on  to  the  more  complete 
socializing  of  government  and  life. 

It  was  inevitable  that  religion  should  feel 
the  effect  of  this  democratic  spirit,  for  the 
life  of  society  invariably  reflects  itself  in 
the  conduct  of  religion.  Now,  no  charge 
is  more  frequently  made  against  our  gen- 
eration than  that  it  is  irreligious.  Again 
and  again  its  godlessness  is  emphasized; 
and  the  unhappy  feature  of  the  charge  is 
the  readiness  with  which  substantiating  evi- 
dence can  be  found.  The  lengthening  of 
the  labor  week,  under  the  alleged  pressure 
of  commercial  necessities,  so  that  thousands 
of  men  and  women  have  no  Sabbath;  the 
dreariness  and  monotony  of  the  lives  of 
many  toilers  driven  by  the  pitiless  regime 
of  modern  machinery  and  piecework;  the 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  47 

intensifying  of  the  craving  for  recreation 
and  the  multiplying  of  cheap  amusements; 
the  breakdown,  under  physical  weariness 
on  the  one  hand  and  religious  indifference 
on  the  other,  of  the  sanctity  of  the  first  day 
of  the  week;  the  deepening  chasm  between 
whole  segments  of  society  and  industry 
and  the  institutions  of  religion ;  the  develop- 
ment of  labor  organizations  into  solidly  knit 
industrial  groups  openly  hostile  to  the 
present  social  order  and  often  virulent  in 
denunciation  of  the  Church  identified  with 
it — all  of  these  are  too  actual  to  be  ignored. 
And  in  the  tempers,  tastes,  and  habits  of 
the  more  comfortable  members  of  society, 
as  well,  there  are  easily  discerned  tend- 
encies and  activities  pagan  in  kind  and 
issue.  The  old  simplicity  of  life,  the  old 
reverence  for  religion  and  the  Church,  the 
old  authority  of  the  pulpit  and  the  altar,  the 
old  sanctity  of  creed  and  confession,  all 
have  either  gone  or  shrunken  to  poor 
shadows  of  their  former  plenitude. 

In  the  very  midst  of  these  conditions, 
however,  a  certain  curious  fact  is  to  be 
noted — that   religious   considerations    were 


48  THE  OLD  FAITH 

never  so  widely  exploited  as  to-day.  Maga- 
zines devote  an  immense  amount  of  space 
to  reports  and  discussions  of  multifarious 
phases  of  religious  activity  and  thought; 
novels,  more  numerously  than  ever,  have  a 
religious  question  at  the  core,  and  some  of 
the  most  popular  and  appealing  plays  are 
dramatic  expositions  of  some  form  or  phase 
of  religious  theory.  So  that,  as  the  presi- 
dent of  Brown  University  has  written, 
"There  is  more  religious  aspiration  abroad  in 
our  land  to-day  than  ever  before,  more  hearty 
response  to  the  setting  forth  of  Christian 
standards  of  action,  more  sincere  desire  to 
translate  the  life  of  Christ  into  the  life  of 
the  struggling  world."  ^  What  has  hap- 
pened, what  is  happening,  that  this  appar- 
ent irreligious  spirit  and  this  almost  pas- 
sionate interest  in  religion  should  prevail 
side  by  side?  The  answer  can  be  put  in 
the  words  of  Shailer  Mathews:  "Democ- 
racy is  stretching  over  into  religion."  ^ 
And  whatever  may  be  the  final  result,  this 
much  is  certain;  the  forms  in  which  religion 


1  Faunce:  What  Does  Christianity  Mean?  p.  143. 

2  The  Church  and  the  Changing  Order,  p.  162. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  49 

must  be  expressed,  the  standards  by  which 
it  is  to  be  judged,  the  manner  of  appeal  it 
makes  and  the  kind  of  authority  it  is  to 
exercise,  are  being  altered  almost  to  the 
measure  of  a  revolution. 

No  man  seriously  concerned  with  life 
dare  ignore  these  modern  influences  and 
the  changes  they  have  made  and  make  upon 
the  religious  thought  and  life  of  our  gen- 
eration. The  discoveries  of  modern  science 
in  the  minds  and  persons  of  patient,  sin- 
cere, and  gifted  men  are  not  lightly  to  be 
neglected;  and  whether  we  consent  or  not, 
the  new  type  of  social  thinking,  the  grow- 
ing spirit  of  democracy,  compels  us  to 
diverge  widely  from  the  religious  forms  and 
applications  which  our  fathers  found  suffi- 
cient. How  is  the  faith  itself  affected? 
And  how  shall  we  conceive  it  after  admit- 
ting all  the  influences  of  the  widening 
knowledge  and  the  social  spirit  of  this  new 
and  challenging  era?  How  does  the  old 
faith  stand  in  the  new  day? 

(1)  What,  in  the  first  place,  is  the  result 
of  modern  science  on  the  truths  of  religion 
we  have  to  preach? 


50  THE  OLD  FAITH 

As  a  sort  of  preliminary  to  the  main  dis- 
cussion at  this  point,  it  is  to  be  remarked 
that  there  are  two  dominant  elements  in  the 
scientific  spirit,  for  the  discipline  of  which 
religious  thinking  may  well  be  grateful. 
They  are  its  passion  for  accuracy  and  its 
reverence  for  law.  It  will  have  no  guesses 
unsupported  by  a  reasonable  array  of  facts. 
It  announces  a  theory  of  natural  selection, 
or  of  the  divisibility  of  the  atom,  or  the 
planetary  nature  of  the  electron,  but  not 
until  a  thousand  observations  and  experi- 
ments have  given  ample  ground  for  the 
hypothesis.  This  is  in  vast  contrast  with 
that  type  of  religious  thinking  which  an- 
nounces unblushingly  the  whole  plan  of 
God  and  can  delineate  the  aspects  and 
activities  of  the  eternal  life  after  the  manner 
of  a  census  report.  Then,  too,  it  discovers 
the  immutable  laws  of  nature,  discerns  the 
orderly  procession  of  cosmic  events,  appre- 
hends the  logic  of  history,  and  refuses  to 
double  in  its  tracks  after  the  fashion  of 
many  a  sermon  and  religious  treatise  which 
vindicate  the  realities  of  the  spirit  only  by 
utter   disregard   of  all  the  continuities  of 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  51 

premise  and  conclusion.  This  passion  for 
accuracy  and  reverence  for  law  seemed  at 
first  to  seal  the  doom  of  religion,  resting, 
as  it  does,  on  foundations  often  beyond  the 
reach  of  any  of  the  instruments  and  proc- 
esses of  exact  science.  But  side  by  side 
with  them  is  the  significant  fact  that  in  the 
most  rigid  statements  of  natural  law  and 
the  most  compelling  theories  deduced  from 
its  discovered  facts,  statements  and  theories 
on  which  it  builds  its  proudest  structures, 
there  is  a  vast  element  of  unprovable  as- 
sumption. 

Science,  to  refer  to  the  illustration  used 
a  moment  ago,  claims  to  separate  a  speck 
of  matter  invisible  to  the  naked  eye  into 
billions  of  molecules,  divide  the  molecule 
into  atoms,  and  then  find  eighteen  hundred 
electrons  in  the  single  atom,  moving  in  a 
complete  planetary  system.  The  wildest 
credulity  of  religion  never  equaled  that 
brave  hypothesis.  The  first  result  of  this 
discovery  of  the  suppositions  of  science  is 
to  show  that  as  long  as  science  permits 
assumption  to  have  so  large  a  place  in  its 
interpretation  of  the  universe  it  cannot  for- 


52  THE  OLD  FAITH 

bid  our  moral  and  religious  assumptions  to 
have  part  in  determining  our  conceptions 
of  the  universe.  In  other  words,  the  first 
and  most  significant,  perhaps,  of  the  results 
of  the  new  science  upon  religion  has  been 
to  vindicate  the  place  which  religion  has 
claimed  for  intelligent  faith.  So  much  in 
general;  now  to  speak  of  particulars. 

"In  the  beginning,"  are  the  first  words 
of  the  Bible,  "God  created,"  and  the  nar- 
rative goes  on  to  describe  the  making  of 
the  world  and  all  that  is  in  it  in  a  series  of 
completed  events.  "And  God  .  .  .  rested 
from  all  his  work  which  God  had  created 
and  made."  And  for  centuries  Bible-read- 
ing humanity  believed  that  the  work  was  all 
done  then;  everything  made,  and  made 
once  for  all.  To-day  Professor  DeVries,  of 
Amsterdam,  has  developed  twelve  different 
races  of  evening  primroses  from  a  common 
stock,  a  Professor  Morgan  has  subjected 
the  eggs  of  a  certain  fly  to  the  influence  of 
radium  and  has  produced  a  separate  species 
which  breeds  true;  while,  to  pass  by  other 
and  equally  striking  results,  Luther  Bur- 
bank  has  amazed  the  world  with  the  crea- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  53 

tions  he  has  accomplished.  He  has  crossed 
a  Japanese  and  an  American  plum  and  pro- 
duced the  fruit  which  revolutionized  the 
prune  industry;  he  has  made  a  new  fruit, 
the  plumcot,  out  of  the  plum  and  the  apri- 
cot, and  it  breeds  true.  He  has  made  three 
kinds  of  poppies  from  a  single  parent  stock, 
and  combined  three  kinds  of  daisies  to  make 
the  Shasta  which  would  rank  as  an  individ- 
ual species,  if  found  wild.  He  has  pro- 
duced plums  without  seeds  and  cherries  for 
canning  that  leave  the  stone  on  the  tree 
when  the  cherries  are  pulled.  He  has  de- 
veloped a  white  blackberry  and  a  spineless 
cactus  which  reproduce  themselves.  The 
normal  walnut  tree  requires  eighteen  or 
twenty  years  before  it  begins  to  bear  nuts 
profitably.  He  has  produced  a  walnut  tree 
which  reproduces  itself  naturally,  and 
which  bears  nuts  profitably  at  eighteen 
months.  In  1884  there  died  a  priest  in  an 
obscure  monastery  in  Silesia  who  discov- 
ered a  law,  known  by  his  name  as  Mendel's 
law,  by  which  specific  qualities  of  plant  and 
animal  can  be  reproduced  accurately 
according  to  the  will  of  the  experimenter — 


54  THE  OLD  FAITH 

a  discovery  which  has  ah^eady  wrought  the 
most  astounding  improvements  in  both 
plant  and  stock-raising.  Turning  away 
from  the  earth,  the  new  science,  looking 
through  the  glass  of  the  astronomer,  tells 
us  that  it  sees  worlds  in  the  making.  It 
sees  here  star  shattering  against  star  and  so 
disintegrating  into  dust  of  stars,  and  these 
particles  falling  together  to  form  another 
star,  the  process  of  change  and  growth  and 
life  and  death  endlessly  going  on  in  spaces 
so  immense  the  mind  of  man  cannot  imag- 
ine them.  The  geologist  assures  us  that 
there  are  constant  changes  taking  place 
in  the  earth  on  which  we  live,  new  stone 
forming,  old  stone  crumbling  into  dust,  the 
granite  crest  of  the  forbidding  mountain 
melting  surely  into  the  soil  from  which  the 
flowers  of  the  valley  spring,  and  the  slime 
and  clay  of  buried  swamps  becoming  the 
solid  rock  on  which  a  city  rests.  Science 
knows  nothing  of  a  creative  force  which 
made  all  things  and  then  rested;  it  knows 
a  creation  which  is  proceeding  without  end; 
and  when  it  speaks  of  a  God,  speaks  of  one, 
not  who  created  all  things,  but  who  is  creat- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  55 

ing  things.  Does  that  contradict  Genesis? 
Only  to  very  arbitrary  minds.  The  nar- 
rative of  Genesis  is  a  story  of  the  subHme 
fact  of  God  making  a  world.  And  the  book 
of  science  is  the  story  of  God  making  a 
world;  the  vital  fact  is  in  each  narrative  the 
same.  Science  adds  simply  another  chapter 
and  describes  not  a  creation  without  God, 
but  the  process  God  employs.  The  truths 
of  religion  remain,  regardless  of  the  process 
which  it  has  discerned;  but  the  appeal  of 
religion  itself  is  mightily  reenforced  by  the 
description  science  gives. 

For  science  has  revealed  to  us  a  growing 
universe.  In  a  vaster  fashion  than  the 
apostle  meant  it  is  true  that  God  is  not 
the  God  of  the  dead  but  of  the  living.  Step 
by  step  strength  and  beauty  of  form  and 
feature  have  developed;  stage  by  stage  the 
adaptability  for  use;  age  by  age  the  keen- 
ness of  sight  and  power  of  reason;  century 
by  century  the  constraint  of  moral  con- 
sciousness. In  every  realm  of  life,  phys- 
ical nature,  mental  range,  social  habit,  reh- 
gious  aspiration,  the  results  have  been  not 
a  manufacture   but   a  growth.     Thought, 


56  THE  OLD  FAITH 

industry,  worship,  faith,  sacrifice,  mar- 
riage, government,  law,  all  have  grown, 
and  grown,  and  grown ;  the  whole  world  of 
life  is  progress,  and  progress  betterward. 
What  does  that  mean  for  religion  to-day? 
Three  great  conceptions. 

First,  that  in  a  living  universe,  growing 
betterward,  moral  good  which  in  a  human 
world  is  the  supremely  fit,  must  go  on  to 
its  complete  victory  and  vindication;  and 
one  has  only  to  turn  to  history  to  see  the 
life  of  human  society  corroborate  the 
conclusions  of  scientific  investigation  and 
theory.  Not  only  in  volumes  like  Lecky's 
History  of  European  Morals,  and  Loring's 
Gesta  Christi,  but  in  the  general  history  of 
humankind  written  without  moral  bias,  the 
slow,  perhaps,  but  undefeated  growth  of 
moral  ideal,  experience,  standards,  and  con- 
duct is  unmistakably  written.  Religion 
which,  in  the  days  when  moral  concerns 
were  most  embattled  and  the  nights  when 
atheism  lay  heaviest  on  the  human  spirit, 
dared  to  affirm  the  victory  of  righteousness 
and  the  certainty  of  spiritual  realities  and 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  57 

their  unfolding,  finds  now  its  greatest  ally 
in  the  very  force  which,  half  a  century  ago, 
was  feared  as  its  greatest  enemy. 

Then,  without  intending  it,  science,  with 
its  revelation  of  a  growing  universe  and  a 
continuous  creative  activity,  has  shattered 
the  old  philosophical  denials  of  the  reason- 
ableness of  the  incarnation  of  God  in  Christ. 
The  incarnation  is  no  longer  unbelievable 
by  scientific  minds.  Unbelief  has  written 
its  volumes  on  the  Christ-Myth  and  its 
description  of  the  pagan  Christs,  and 
thought  to  end  the  business.  But  read  in 
the  light  of  the  science  of  to-day  these  books 
are  so  much  more  reenforcement  of  the 
faith.  They  emphasize  anew  the  truth  of 
nature  continually  moving  on  and  up  in  a 
ceaseless  quest  for  higher  forms.  A  thinker 
like  Bergson,  without  the  vision  of  Christ, 
delineates  the  vital  impulse  pushing  out  in 
new  developments  and  creations,  till  the 
Christian  mind  recognizes  in  it  all  God 
toiling  under  the  beneficent  bondage  of 
law,  which  is  but  the  report  of  the  divine 
method,  making  a  world  of  nature  and  men. 


58  THE  OLD  FAITH 

Here  and  there  in  various  realms,  new 
and  better  individuals  appear,  prophets  of 
kindred  life  which  ultimately  follows.  And 
these  pagan  Christs,  Christ-Myths,  and  the 
like,  also  witness  to  the  inextinguishable 
quest  of  humanity  itself  for  the  highest ;  they 
testify  the  passion  of  the  world  for  the  god- 
like man;  they  illustrate  the  moving  spirit 
in  humanity,  passionately  insisting  on  that 
which  is  not;  "the  earnest  expectation  of 
the  creation  waiteth  for  the  reveahng  of 
the  sons  of  God."  In  line  with  all  this, 
in  a  growing  universe,  where  nature  and 
humanity  alike  are  growing  betterward, 
and  questing  for  still  nobler  issues,  Christ 
may  well  be  not  simply  the  isolated  miracle 
religion  has  always  proclaimed,  but  even 
more.  Christ  may  well  be  the  first  fruits, 
not  alone  of  them  that  sleep,  but  of  this 
stupendous  process  of  a  creating  God  now 
going  on,  the  end  of  which  shall  not  be 
realized  "till  we  all  attain  unto  the  unity 
of  the  faith  and  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
Son  of  God,  unto  a  full-grown  man,  unto 
the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fullness 
of  Christ." 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  59 

So  too  the  science  of  to-day  has  made 
a  place — the  matter  is  beyond  its  realm, 
though  it  does  argue  the  point — for  reli- 
gion's fundamental  contention,  the  saving 
power  of  the  cross  of  Christ  and  the  atone- 
ment. While  we  can  no  longer  think  of 
God  as  an  angry  tyrant — though  the  wrath 
of  God  has  vast  and  wholesome  meaning — 
who  must  be  appeased  by  the  death  of  Jesus 
as  a  quantitative  substitute  for  the  death 
of  all  the  race;  and  while  the  new  science 
shows  us  the  evolutionary  process — individ- 
uals and  species  developing  as  they  are 
best  suited  to  endure  the  conditions  of  life — 
it  does  not  show  us  that  surviving  which  is 
in  itself  the  best  according  to  our  highest 
human  values.  The  weed  crowds  out  the 
wheat;  brambles  choke  the  berries;  the 
animals  more  useful  in  a  world  of  human 
interests  die  out  amid  conditions  of  food 
supply  and  climate  where  wild  beasts  easily 
multiply.  We  have  no  promise  in  the  evo- 
lutionary process  alone  for  the  ultimate 
victory  of  moral  good,  or  even  the  humanly 
useful.  It  takes  a  Burbank  to  make  a 
Shasta   daisy   and   tame   the   cactus   to   a 


60  THE  OLD  FAITH 

food  plant.  The  evolutionary  principle 
plus  the  recombining  power  of  a  govern- 
ing mind  results  in  the  continuous  per- 
fecting of  individuals  and  species.  And 
this  is  in  the  realm  of  nature  the  principle 
announced  by  religion  in  the  realm  of 
spirit.  Though  Burbank  is  not  outside  the 
unmeasured  series  of  evolutionary  develop- 
ment, but  represents  its  highest  achieve- 
ment, the  production  of  humankind,  he,  by 
an  interference  with  the  normal  course, 
works  within  the  laws,  what  to  one  who 
was  unfamiliar  with  the  natural  process 
would  be  miracles  of  perfected  nature.  So 
Christ,  born  of  a  woman,  stands  at  the  head 
of  all  humankind,  God  incarnate,  the 
highest  upreach  of  the  lift  of  life ;  and  by  a 
mystery  we  cannot  penetrate,  as  the 
Shasta  daisy  cannot  fathom  the  forces  that 
have  made  it  great,  and  as  we  cannot  under- 
stand the  powers  of  nature  we  so  readily 
enjoy,  by  the  mystery  of  the  cross  and  all 
that  centuries  of  human  experience  have 
meant  by  atonement,  he  has  given  to  the 
onward  march  of  life  a  supreme  and  reor- 
ganizing movement,  whereby,  in  the  words 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  61 

of  religion,  "if  any  man  is  in  Christ  Jesus, 
he  is  a  new  creature."  And  science,  which 
some  of  us  have  so  gr^tly  feared,  has  be- 
come Hke  another  disciple,  kneeling  to  say 
to  the  vindicated  Christ,  "My  Lord,  and  my 
God." 

Amid  many  questions  crowding  for  con- 
sideration here  there  are  for  us  only  two: 
What,  then,  about  retribution  and  reward? 
What  has  science,  in  other  words,  to  say 
about  hell  and  heaven? 

Let  us  admit  at  once  that  the  hell  of 
Calvinism,  with  God  torturing  sinners  over 
the  fires  as  cruel  boys  hold  flies  on  pins  above 
a  lamp,  as  Jonathan  Edwards  illustrated 
it,  is  now  out  of  the  question.  The  old 
theological  idea  that  sin,  because  it  is  com- 
mitted against  an  Infinite  Being,  is  itself 
infinite  and  must  be  infinitely  punished,  is 
no  longer  possible.  It  would  be  of  a  piece 
with  supposing,  as  John  Brierly  has  said, 
that  "a  child's  punishment  for  its  offenses 
is  to  be  proportionate  to  the  superior  wis- 
dom, strength,  and  station  of  its  parent."  ^ 
What  conception  of  sin,  then,  have  we  left? 

1  Religion  and  To-day,  p.  34. 


62  THE  OLD  FAITH 

Evolution  has  been  read  to  mean  that  sin  is 
a  fall  upward:  that  "there  are  no  shadows 
where  there  is  no  light" ;  that  eventually  the 
race  will  have  sloughed  off  all  moral  evil; 
and  so  punishment  for  sin  is  not  to  be 
thought  of. 

Furthermore,  the  personal  and  individ- 
ual evil  that  is  visible  and  effective  now  is 
largely  the  result  of  inheritance;  the  lust- 
ful reaping  the  sin  of  forgotten  ancestors, 
the  criminal  showing  the  flower  of  seeds 
sown  in  his  blood  by  progenitors  long  since 
dead.  And  adding  to  the  irresponsibility 
of  the  evildoer  are  the  complex  influences 
of  surroundings.  All  of  this  may  be  true, 
though,  of  course,  the  fact  of  personal  and 
willful  wrongdoing  is  too  widespread  a 
matter  of  observation  and  experience  to  be 
ignored  in  any  such  fashion.  But  the 
biography  of  an  evil  does  not  settle  the 
question  of  its  results.  Knowing  how  sin 
came  to  be  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  it  is 
here.  However  it  may  have  originated,  the 
effects  are  very  bitter  now. 

Of  the  terrible  constraints  of  heredity. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  63 

science  has  proofs  enough.  Without  illus- 
trating further,  consider  the  summary  of 
one  notorious  family,  that  of  the  celebrateii 
Max  Jukes,  a  descendant  of  the  early 
Dutch  settlers  of  New  York.  He  had  two 
sons  who  married  half-sisters.  In  1877  the 
history  of  540  of  the  descendants  had  been 
traced  and  that  of  most  of  the  others  was 
accurately  known.  One  third  of  them  had 
died  in  infancy;  310  were  paupers  who 
spent  a  total  of  2,300  years  in  almshouses; 
440  were  physical  wrecks;  more  than  one 
half  of  the  female  descendants  were  prosti- 
tutes; 130  of  the  descendants  were  con- 
victed criminals,  7  of  them  being  murderers ; 
only  20  learned  trades  and  of  these,  10 
learned  in  state  prisons.  Up  to  1877  this 
one  family  had  cost  the  state  of  New  York 
more  than  $1,250,000  and  the  expense  is 
still  going  on. 

Side  by  side  with  the  sordid  record  of 
the  Jukes  family  read  the  story  of  the 
family  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  In  1900 
1,394  of  his  descendants  had  been  identi- 
fied. Of  them,  295  were  college  graduates, 
13    presidents    of    colleges,    besides    many 


64  THE  OLD  FAITH 

principals  of  similar  institutions;  more  than 
100  were  clergymen,  missionaries,  or  theo- 
logical professors;  75  were  officers  in  the 
army  and  navy ;  60  were  prominent  authors 
and  writers,  having  produced  135  important 
books  and  editing  18  publications;  60  were 
physicians;  100  and  more  were  lawyers,  one 
of  them  our  most  eminent  professor  of  law ; 
30  were  judges,  80  held  public  office,  one 
being  Vice-President  of  the  United  States; 
3  were  United  States  senators,  others  being 
governors,  members  of  Congress,  mayors  of 
cities  and  ministers  to  foreign  courts;  one 
was  president  of  the  Pacific  Mail  Steamship 
Company,  and  others  prominent  in  business 
and  banking  circles;  while  it  is  not  known 
that  any  was  ever  convicted  of  crime  !^ 

It  looks  like  a  clear  case  against  any  doc- 
trine of  penalty.  But  two  facts  are  yet  to 
be  noted.  First,  that  side  by  side  with  this 
record  of  inherited  and  continuous  evil  you 
have  the  innumerable  narratives  of  men 
and  women  born  in  sin  and  reared  in 
damning  environments,  with  criminality 
and  lust  and  pauperism  in  their  blood,  and 

1  Cf.  Herbert  Walter:  Genetics,  p.  227f. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  65 

evil  in  their  associations  and  outlook;  but 
who,  by  the  power  of  God,  have  become 
men  and  women  of  amazing  graciousness 
and  goodness  of  character  and  life.  The 
story  of  our  great  city  missions,  of  London's 
halls,  of  Water  Street  and  Hadley  Hall  in 
New  York,  and  the  Salvation  Army  bar- 
racks made  popular  by  Harold  Begbie,  the 
story  of  foreign  missions  and  the  uncomited 
altars  of  Christian  churches  everywhere,  is 
a  triumphant  romance  of  the  possibilities 
of  changed  life. 

And  the  second  fact  to  be  remarked  here 
is  that  notwithstanding  the  constraints  of 
heredity  and  the  evil  born  in  the  blood,  not- 
withstanding all  theories  of  a  fall  upward, 
there  remains,  insistent  and  inexorable, 
the  sense  of  obligation  and  responsibility. 
However  men  may  have  become  what  they 
are,  they  know  they  are  not  what  they  ought 
to  be;  and  if  there  is  no  story  of  sin  save 
that  of  a  guiltless  inheritance  of  unavoid- 
able defects,  then  science  shows  us  nature 
producing  at  one  and  the  same  time  an 
utterly  inconsistent  and  useless  feeling  of 
responsibility  for  it. 


66  THE  OLD  FAITH 

Science  has  not  a  word  to  speak  specifi- 
cally on  the  reality  of  hell ;  it  lays  before  you 
the  inexorable  facts  of  human  character  and 
its  silence  is  an  inevitable  and  searching  ques- 
tion. Can  there  be  a  just  moral  order  which 
would  ignore  all  moral  distinctions  between 
these  two  families  ?  Does  not  the  simple  fact 
of  heredity  and  its  impressive  laws,  argue  for 
differences  in  the  immortal  life  correspond- 
ing to  the  moral  differences  in  the  mortal 
life?  When  a  soul  knows  no  moral  changes, 
when  it  comes  to  the  end  of  its  earthly  day 
stained  and  evil;  when  under  the  influence 
of  heredity  and  its  impressive  laws  argue  for 
and  of  an  environment  in  which  it  acqui- 
esced; or  when  by  deliberate  or  reckless 
revolt  against  recognized  moral  good  it 
comes  to  the  journey's  earthly  ending,  is 
not  the  witness  of  science  to  the  fact  that 
the  inevitable  issue  is  a  condition  of  expe- 
rience appropriate  to  the  character  thus 
formed  and  finished,  not  punishment  in  the 
old  sense  of  retribution,  but  the  harvest  of 
life?  What  kind  of  a  life  hereafter  could 
the  Jukeses  live?  What  can  there  be  in  the 
next  life  for  a  soul  that  is  shrunken  and 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  67 

selfish  and  lustful  and  identified  with  sin? 
Throw  away  every  notion  of  punishment, 
and  the  best  you  can  get  is  what  John  heard 
from  open  heavens:  "He  that  is  unright- 
eous, let  him  do  unrighteousness  still,  and 
he  that  is  filthy  let  him  be  made  filthy 
still."  You  may  put  out  the  fires  of  the 
old-fashioned  hell  in  all  the  pleasant  waters 
of  new  scriptural  interpretations  you 
please,  but  the  profound  reality  of  per- 
sonal character  remains;  and  if  there  is  no 
hell  to  which  a  soul  may  go,  there  is  yet  the 
more  poignant  hell  which  the  soul  itself 
may  be. 

Reversing  the  terms,  you  get  the  argu- 
ment from  the  morally  good.  Science  with 
its  impressive  reading  of  natural  law,  while 
not  pushing  it  to  the  extreme,  as  Henry 
Drummond  did  in  his  notable  volume,  con- 
firms religion  in  its  emphasis  upon  the 
unflinching  spiritual  law;  and  adds  to  the 
heaven  of  religious  faith  and  hope  the 
assurance  of  the  most  convincing  reason. 

For  here  also  the  silence  of  science  is  as 
eloquent  as  its  voice.  It  unveils  many  an 
ancient   mystery    and   lays   bare   many   a 


68  THE  OLD  FAITH 

hidden  process;  it  strips  the  supernatural 
from  many  a  storied  marvel  and  in  place  of 
miracle  reveals  the  operation  of  calculable 
law.  But  some  things  it  cannot  explain. 
It  has  not  told  the  origin  of  love,  nor  of  the 
universal  expectation  of  a  life  beyond, 
where  those  that  love,  and  have  lived 
according  to  their  highest  light,  shall  meet 
again  and  live  forever.  If  this  were  the 
tradition  of  a  single  people,  the  fancy  of  a 
tribe,  an  expectation  local  to  a  continent  or 
commensurate  with  a  certain  degree  of  cul- 
ture, it  might  be  either  explained  or  negli- 
gible. But  it  is  the  universal  attitude,  the 
race-wide  expectation.  Science  shattering 
the  Ptolemaic  theory  may  have  destroyed 
the  older  localizations  of  the  immortal  life, 
but  the  hope  and  certainty  it  has  not 
touched.  At  the  boundary  of  that  realm 
it  halts.  It  makes  more  reasonable  than 
before  the  foundation-beliefs  on  which 
religion  stands,  and  there,  where  religion 
leaps  to  its  highest  flight,  it  cannot  say  No. 
It  may  challenge  the  literalness  of  religion's 
descriptions  of  the  life  that  is  to  be ;  the  fact 
enshrined   in  those   descriptions   it  cannot 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  69 

deny.  And,  made  all  the  more  clear  and 
credible  by  the  work  which  the  scientific 
spirit  has  wrought  in  its  scrutiny  of  the 
New  Testament,  greater,  surer,  as  the  years 
go  by,  stands  One,  for  whom  are  all  things 
and  by  whom  are  all  things,  saying,  "I  go 
to  prepare  a  place  for  you  .  .  .  that  where 
I  am  there  ye  may  be  also."  And  not  a 
word  that  cautious  and  credible  science 
utters  casts  a  shadow  on  the  exalting  hope 
of  immortahty,  which  for  nineteen  hundred 
years  has  made  life  more  bearable  and 
worthy,  and  death  less  dreadful  and  to  be 
feared. 

(2)  Turning,  then,  to  the  second  influence 
which  challenges  our  religious  thinking  to- 
day, what  is  the  result  of  modern  democ- 
racy on  the  ancient  faith  and  our  proclama- 
tion of  it?  The  immediate  answer  is  that 
modern  democracy  is  transforming  our 
theological  conceptions. 

First  of  all,  it  is  changing  our  idea  of 
God.  There  is  a  sting  of  truth  in  the  sneer 
of  Feuerbach  that  man  has  made  God  in  his 
own  likeness.  One  can  catch  the  reflection 
of  theology  as  he  looks  into  the  political 


70  THE  OLD  FAITH 

theories  and  institutions  of  humanity,  for 
the  theology  of  every  age  has  comple- 
mented its  prevailing  political  ideas.  The 
sternness  and  remoteness  of  the  God  of  the 
Middle  Ages  were  a  characteristic  reflec- 
tion of  the  conception  and  practice  of  mon- 
archy. Given  the  obsession  of  the  divine 
right  of  kings  and  the  logical  assumption 
of  the  temporal  authority  of  the  pope,  with 
the  corresponding  feudal  organization  of 
society  into  lowering  gradations  of  caste 
from  baron  to  serf,  and  it  is  almost  inevi- 
table that  there  shall  come  to  pass  the  notion 
of  a  necessary  series  of  mediators — priest 
and  Mary  and  Christ — before  the  soul  can 
lay  its  petition  before  the  feet  of  God,  and 
while  this  implacable  and  inaccessible  sov- 
ereignty of  God  and  even  of  Christ,  as  it 
was  developed,  can  be  derived  from  the 
Scriptures  only  by  neglect  of  many  and  au- 
thoritative passages  of  completely  modify- 
ing significance,  yet  that  very  neglect  of 
modifying  passages  would  be  most  natural 
to  minds  formed  under  the  influence  of 
mediseval  conceptions  of  society.  Absolute 
monarchy  was  conceived  to  be  the  highest 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  71 

and  noblest  expression  of  character  and 
life,  and  the  conception  of  God  would 
inevitably  take  that  form.  Luther's  child- 
ish notion  of  Christ,  that  of  a  pitiless  Judge, 
derived  from  the  stained  glass  window  of 
the  village  church,  which  pictured  him  as 
sitting  on  a  rainbow  with  a  flaming  sword 
in  his  hand,  was  the  ideal  in  which  his  whole 
generation  and  epoch  lived. 

One  cannot  always  prove  which  of  two 
conceptions  is  primary,  but  it  is  more  than 
debatable  whether  Calvin's  theology  shaped 
his  conception  of  government,  or  whether 
his  inexorable  theocratic  ideas,  born  of  his 
unflinching  allegiance  to  Old  Testament 
political  forms,  were  not  responsible  for  his 
stiff  and  pitiless  doctrines  of  the  sovereignty 
of  God,  and  the  immutable  decrees.  Puri- 
tanism was  in  a  very  real  measure  the 
advent  of  new  political  ideas  and  their 
influence  stretching  over  into  religion.  The 
Puritan,  says  Macaulay,  "prostrated  him- 
self in  the  dust  before  his  Maker,  but  he 
sets  his  foot  on  the  neck  of  his  king."  It 
was  inevitable  that  Puritanism,  when  it 
had  learned  that  society  was  greater  than 


72  THE  OLD  FAITH 

any  sovereign,  should  discern,  if  slowly, 
that  religion  could  do  better  things  than 
prostrate  itself  in  the  dust  before  its  Maker. 
And  Puritanism,  building  a  political  com- 
monwealth on  a  new  continent,  built  also 
the  beginnings  of  a  new  conception  of  reli- 
gion. 

So  too  the  theories  of  the  atonement  have 
felt  the  softening  influence  of  the  demo- 
cratic spirit.  The  theories  of  the  atonement, 
of  Christ's  death  as  the  ransom  paid  to  the 
devil  for  the  rescue  of  the  world,  of  Christ 
as  a  penal  substitute,  and  the  like,  theories 
which  have  had  vast  and  permanent  value 
in  the  development  of  religious  thinking 
and  in  the  building  of  Christian  society  and 
life,  are  theories  which  could  arise  only 
under  the  protecting  shadow  of  absolute 
monarchy. 

The  Puritan  however,  in  this  connection, 
as  he  debased  kingship  exalted  law;  and 
instead  of  implicit  and  castelike  submission 
to  a  monarch,  developed  an  unrelieved  sub- 
servience to  a  legal  system.  In  theology 
the  result  was  a  theory  of  atonement  which 
reproduced   much   of   the   arbitrariness   of 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  73 

the  older  conceptions;  only  instead  of  a 
devil  to  be  bought  off  or  an  angry  monarch 
to  be  appeased,  it  was  a  terrible  and  ma- 
jestic law  which  had  to  be  upheld.  The 
result  to-day  is  that  there  is  no  theory 
of  atonement  to  which  any  considerable 
body  of  thinkers  can  hold  unqualified 
allegiance;  and  in  the  reaction  from  the 
forbidding  and  arbitrary  doctrines  of  the 
past,  the  fact  and  doctrine  of  any  atone- 
ment bade  fair  to  be  lost.  However,  evi- 
dences are  not  lacking  now  of  a  return  to 
the  substance  of  atonement,  though  a  satis- 
fying theory  is  yet  unformulated.  Perhaps 
it  will  never  be  discerned  or  formulated, 
but,  as  ex-President  Roosevelt  has  pointed 
out  certain  analogies  between  biological 
processes  and  the  course  of  national  history, 
our  doctrines  of  theology  must  follow  the 
analogies  of  social  experience,  or,  in  other 
words,  be  discovered  from  the  spiritual  and 
moral  processes  found  operative  in  the  life 
and  activities  of  society.  What  is  thus  true 
of  the  doctrines  of  God  and  the  atonement 
is  true  also  of  other  and  correlated  doctrines 
— penalty,   Providence,   and  the  like;  for, 


74.  THE  OLD  FAITH 

whatever  may  have  been  the  forms  in  which 
the  older  generations  cast  their  confessions 
of  faith,  the  new  day  demands  restatement 
of  our  creeds  in  terms  of  modern  expe- 
rience. "No  man's  theology,"  says  the  Rev. 
George  Jackson,  in  a  sermon  on  "Char- 
acter and  Creed,"  "is  safe  that  is  not 
brought  into  constant  contact  with  actual 
hfe."  ' 

There  are  at  hand  certain  illustrations 
that  this  method  of  theological  interpreta- 
tion is  already  in  progress.  Our  new  insis- 
tence on  brotherhood ;  our  renewed  emphasis 
upon  the  Fatherhood  of  God ;  our  recurrent 
use  of  the  family  as  the  type  of  ideal  society 
and  religious  fellowship;  our  discernment 
of  the  social  and  economic  as  well  as  purely 
religious  service  and  meaning  of  the  historic 
Jesus;  our  imperative  application  to  the 
immediate  concerns  and  conditions  of  pres- 
ent day  society  of  New  Testament  passages 
which  were  formerly  considered  wholly 
prophetic  of  the  world  to  come,  all  indicate 
the  increasing  influence  and  result  of  the 
democratic  spirit  upon  religious  thinking. 

1  The  Table  Talk  of  Jesus,  p.  75. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  75 

"Life,"   as  John  Brierly  has  written,   "is 
compelhng  us  to  revise  our  formulas."  ^ 

As  democracy  has  thus  affected  theology, 
so  too  it  has  influenced  religious  conduct. 
It  has  made  religion  not  simply  a  matter 
of  worship  or  formulated  creed  or  sustain- 
ing personal  hope,  but  a  habit  of  life.  It 
has  brought  religion  out  of  the  Church  and 
the  closet,  out  of  individual  experience 
itself,  and  made  it  coincident  with  all  society. 
Religion  used  to  be  a  private  concern  be- 
tween a  man  and  his  God.  It  is  now  an 
affair  in  which  a  man's  neighbor  is  included. 
"The  only  relationship  big  enough  for  any 
one  man  is  all  the  rest  of  mankind."  ^  It 
used  to  be  a  matter  of  one's  personal  con- 
science and  conduct  and  transgression  and 
salvation;  it  is  now  a  matter  also  of  one's 
acquiescence  or  participation  in  the  malad- 
justments of  society.  It  used  to  be  a 
refuge  from  a  sense  of  individual  guilt; 
now  it  is  an  impetus  to  social  activity.  We 
have  learned  that  "a  religion  which  merely 
consoles  us  for  the  wrongs  we  have  done  is 


1  Religion  and  To-day,  p.  102. 

-Bishop  Brent,  quoted  by  Roosevelt:  History  as  Literature,  p.  273. 


76  THE  OLD  FAITH 

a  menace  to  moral  progress."  ^  And  slowly, 
with  stress  and  strain  and  not  a  little  mis- 
understanding, democracy  is  driving  reli- 
gion out  to  recognize  in  social  injustices 
and  limitations  a  responsibility  and  trans- 
gression, to  right  wrongs  in  which  every 
individual  shares,  and  to  find  its  primary 
task,  not  in  confessing  social  sins  or  reliev- 
ing social  wants,  but  in  ending  the  one  and 
preventing  the  other.  The  spirit  of  democ- 
racy, however,  is  not  simply  a  volatile  and 
inaccessible  atmosphere  permeating  and 
environing  men  and  women  in  groups;  it 
comes  to  power  only  through  individuals. 
It  is  itself  a  personal  matter.  There  has 
never  been  a  reformation  of  any  kind,  a 
cleansing  of  politics,  or  curbing  of  tyranny, 
or  humanizing  of  theology,  or  any  other 
service  accomplished  for  society  or  individ- 
uals wrought  by  democracy;  whatever  of 
the  kind  has  been  done  at  all  has  been  done 
not  by  democracy  but  by  democrats.  So 
too  the  influence  of  democracy  on  religion 
has  been  an  influence  upon  individual  reli- 
gionists,  and   Christianity  is  changing  its 

*  Lyman:  Theology  and  Human  Problems,  p.  210. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  77 

social  attitude  and  expression  because  indi- 
vidual Christians  are  being  compelled  to 
change  their  social  attitude  and  expression. 
The  manner  of  change  can  be  indicated  by 
three  out  of  not  a  few  possible  illustrations. 
It  is  a  change  in  the  attitude  of  religion 
and  the  religious  man  toward  the  corporate 
task  of  society,  or  politics.  There  has  been 
probably  no  more  glaring  contrast  between 
ideals  and  actions  than  that  between  the 
Christian  man's  creed  and  his  political 
habits.  There  has  never  been  a  political 
evil  in  American  life — the  legalized  exist- 
ence of  the  commerce  in  alcoholic  drinks, 
the  continuance  of  corrupt  officials  in  power, 
the  administration  of  municipal,  State,  and 
federal  affairs  for  the  benefit  of  public  serv- 
ice and  other  corporations  protected  by  fran- 
chise— not  a  single  political  evil  but  could 
have  been  prevented  or  ended  at  the  will  of 
the  Christian  voters.  The  Christian  voters, 
however,  heretofore  have  very  largely 
refrained  from  voting  or  have  voted  as 
party  and  personal  affiliations  directed  for 
the  maintainance  of  the  existing  order. 
Some  few  have  sincerely  been  so  concerned 


78  THE  OLD  FAITH 

in  the  things  of  the  other  world  that  they 
have  honestly  undervalued  the  things  of 
this  world,  but  the  great  majority  have  been 
governed  by  no  such  fine  and  positive  spir- 
ituality. For  the  most  part  they  have 
simply  recognized  no  connection  between 
their  religious  profession  and  their  respon- 
sibility as  citizens.  Religion  has  been  a 
matter  of  a  specific  kind  and  limited  in  its 
outreach  to  a  few  very  distinct  affairs.  The 
vote-as-you-pray  appeal  which  was  so  pop- 
ular at  a  certain  period  and  with  certain 
elements  in  political  life,  while  striking  the 
true  note,  fell  upon  deaf  ears.  The 
"Church  vote"  was  a  matter  of  jest. 

The  spirit  of  democracy  is  altering  that  to- 
day. It  is  breaking  down  partisan  lines  and 
thrusting  the  question  of  personal  char- 
acter into  every  election.  It  is  increasingly 
difficult  for  a  man  of  low  morals  to  be  elected 
to  office.  The  Church  vote  is  rapidly  ceas- 
ing to  be  a  jest.  The  attitude  of  the 
churches  on  political  questions,  such  as  the 
form  of  city  government,  the  regulation  or 
suppression  of  vice,  as  well  as  their  attitude 
toward  the  candidates  for  office,  is  a  matter 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  79 

of  increasing  influence.  This  means  that 
rehgion  is  invading  the  whole  hfe  of  men. 
It  is  no  less  otherworldly  that  formerly, 
rightly  conceived;  but  it  tests  itself  not 
merely  by  a  man's  personal  experience  or 
feeling  or  belief,  but  by  his  life  and  action 
and  influence  in  the  whole  business  of  being 
a  man.  Democracy  has  so  affected  religion 
that  no  one  can  be  a  good  Christian  who  is 
a  bad  or  even  a  careless  citizen. 

So  too  the  spirit  of  democracy  has  affected 
the  attitude  of  religion  toward  the  industrial 
life  of  society.  The  labor  unions  have 
taught  the  churches  some  wholesome  if 
humiliating  lessons.  Their  close-knit  or- 
ders, by  which  the  interest  of  one  becomes 
the  interest  of  all;  their  heroic  battles  and 
sacrifices  for  their  members'  welfare;  their 
system  of  strikes,  direct  and  sympathetic, 
mismanaged  and  ill-timed  and  even  unjust 
as  they  have  often  been,  but  breathing  the 
living  spirit  of  brotherhood;  their  money 
gladly  shared  from  scanty  wages  to  reen- 
force  their  comrades  battling  perhaps  across 
the  continent  for  justice,  misappropriated 
and  misused  as  oftentimes  the  money  may 


80  THE  OLD  FAITH 

have  been;  all  of  these  features  of  modern 
labor  unions  have  shown  the  churches  a 
larger  but  neglected  duty.  And  the 
churches  are  learning  the  lesson.  Democ- 
racy is  showing  religion  that  the  conditions 
in  which  the  other  half  of  society  lives  are 
of  vital  importance  to  both  halves;  and  is 
insisting  that  Christians  cannot  ignore  their 
neighbors  and  have  access  to  their  God. 
Religion  to-day  is  discovering  that  it  can- 
not profit  by  cheap  garments  if  the  cheap- 
ness is  wrung  from  sweatshop  labor;  it 
dare  not  be  silent  or  inactive  before  the 
spectacle  of  the  broken  children  of  the  mine 
and  colliery  and  mill.  Eighteenth-century 
religion  put  its  ban  on  smuggled  goods,  on 
profits  stolen  from  the  government;  twen- 
tieth-century religion  is  discovering  that  it 
must  ban  profits  stolen  from  childhood  and 
unfortimate  mothers,  overworked  shopgirls 
and  underpaid  workmen.  To  put  it  in  per- 
sonal terms,  we  are  coming  to  see  that 
Christian  women  dare  not  profit  by  bargain- 
counter  sales  made  possible  because  of  star- 
vation wages;  Christian  men  dare  not  con- 
sent to  or  help  to  maintain  profits  of  any 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  81 

kind  which  necessitate  injustice  and  hard- 
ship anywhere  down  the  hne.  That  is 
democracy  revising  the  attitude  of  rehgion 
to  industry. 

It  has  wrought  a  third  change,  namely, 
in  the  attitude  of  rehgion  toward  poverty. 
Rehgion  has  always  been  philanthropic, 
and  there  has  been  no  greater  or  prouder 
argument  for  the  wholesome  motives  of  the 
Church  than  its  institutions  of  charity  and 
social  help.  It  has  listed  its  hospitals,  asy- 
lums, homes,  schools,  orphanages,  dispen- 
saries, and  poor  funds;  it  has  mustered  its 
multiplying  organizations  for  community 
help  and  indiscriminate  benevolence,  and 
has  concluded  the  story  was  done.  Democ- 
racy has  begun  to  illuminate  that  idea.  As 
Professor  Olin  A.  Curtis,  of  Drew  Theo- 
logical Seminary,  has  finely  said  in  a  paper 
privately  printed,  "The  democratic  spirit 
is  different  from  the  philanthropic  spirit, 
which  cares  for  all  men  and  tries  to  help  all 
men.  It  is  quite  possible  to  be  a  philanthro- 
pist and  yet  not  to  be  a  democrat  at  all."  ^ 
Democracy  is  teaching  us  that  as  Christians 

1  Personal  Paper,  Febniary,  1914,  p.  13.  ... 


82  THE  OLD  FAITH 

we  must  not  simply  help  the  poor ;  but  must 
remove  the  necessity  and  conditions  of  pov- 
erty. Religion  can  no  longer  be  proud  of 
its  distribution  of  money  to  men  and  women 
who  have  no  work;  it  must  be  reorganizing 
industry  so  that  they  shall  have  work  and 
not  need  poor  funds.  Democracy  is  com- 
pelling religion  to  see  that  to  bring  about 
milk  inspection  and  adequate  sewage  and 
ventilated  and  uncrowded  housing,  public 
playgrounds  and  kindergartens,  is  more 
religious  than  to  give  away  coffins  for  the 
babies  of  the  poor,  or  provide  nurses  and 
medicines  to  the  fever-stricken  of  the  ten- 
ements, or  eggs  and'  milk  and  sanitariums 
for  the  helpless  victims  of  preventable 
tuberculosis.  That  is  religion's  latest  les- 
son. Some  of  us  are  learning  it  with  grave 
difficulty  and  much  protest  and  very  slowly. 
But  we  are  learning  it,  and  must  learn  it 
thoroughly  or  by  our  refusal  be  exiled 
from  any  fellowship  in  contemporary  reli- 
gion, which  has  discovered  that  it  is  no 
longer  a  segment  of  personal  experience 
and  interest  alone,  but  the  very  stuff  and 
substance  and  spirit  and  atmosphere  of  the 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  83 

ideals,    functions,    and    responsibilities    of 
society  at  large. 

But  when  we  have  seen  in  this  fashion  the 
influence  of  democracy  on  religion;  when 
we  have  noted  the  changed  conceptions  of 
theology,  the  humanizing  of  the  doctrine 
of  God,  the  artificiality  dropping  away  from 
the  conceptions  of  atonement,  the  more 
practical  interpretations  of  sin  and  penalty, 
the  more  social  character  of  experience  and 
immortality;  when  we  have  marked  religion 
going  out  into  life's  commonplaces — the 
courts  and  commercial  houses  and  streets 
and  factories  and  voting  booths — and  be- 
coming not  a  segment  or  phase  of  life  but 
the  whole  atmosphere  and  attitude  of  life, 
under  the  revolutionizing  influence  of  the 
democratic  spirit;  when  we  have  seen  this, 
then  we  discover  another  and  arresting  fact. 
The  expanding  and  effective  spirit  of 
democracy  reveals  anew  the  unique  and 
unalterable  character  of  religion  itself^ 
Democracy  alone  introduces  man  to  him- 
self. It  shows  him  his  weighty  obligations 
to  those  around  him.  It  reveals  the  other- 
wise unsuspected  dignity  of  his  human  re- 


84  THE  OLD  FAITH 

lationships,  and  the  disciplining  joy  of 
mutual  service.  It  gives  him  the  inspira- 
tion and  responsibility  of  brotherhood  and 
transforms  the  world  from  a  battlefield  into 
a  home.  But  democrac}^  is  a  servant  and 
not  a  master.  It  draws  its  commission 
from  a  source  beyond  itself.  While  it  claims 
and  seems  to  have  influenced  religion,  it 
has  been,  after  all,  only  a  porter  opening 
the  door  through  which  religion  has  passed 
from  the  cathedral  into  the  market,  from 
the  cloister  into  the  midst  of  toiling  men. 
This  is  a  truth  affirmed  alike  by  the  witness 
of  history  and  the  voice  of  personal  expe- 
rience. 

The  history  of  the  American  people  is 
not  a  greater  testimony  to  the  power  and 
value  of  the  democratic  ideal  than  it  is  to 
the  constraints  of  religion.  We  are  people 
born  in  religious  passion  as  well  as  bred  by 
the  enthusiasm  of  democracy.  The  May- 
flower brought  a  new  political  idea  to  New 
England,  but  only  because  its  chief  cargo 
was  an  unappeased  religious  conviction. 
With  the  exception  of  Virginia,  which  was 
a  commercial  experiment,  and  the  Spanish 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  85 

settlements,  which  were  estabhshments  of 
imperial  avarice,  the  moving  force  behind 
the  enterprise  of  American  colonization  was 
religion.  "Religious  zeal  swept  the  Jesuit 
missionaries  across  the  northern  wilderness 
to  the  Mississippi;  German  pietism  made 
the  AUeghenies  ring  with  hymns ;  Moravian 
missionaries  consecrated  the  soil  of  Ohio; 
the  Society  of  Friends  gave  a  State  the 
name  of  Penn,  and  a  city  the  name  of  broth- 
erly love;  English  Puritanism  stamped  its 
tradition  on  the  conscience  of  New  Eng- 
land." ' 

So  much  for  the  founding  of  the  nation. 
These  modern  movements  and  ideals  which 
have  been  thrown  in  apparent  contrast  with 
the  Church  and  Christianity  to  the  supposed 
discredit  of  the  latter,  have  what  source? 
The  newer  conception  of  government 
enunciated  in  the  imperishable  language  of 
Lincoln's  Gettysburg  speech,  "government 
of  the  people,  for  the  people,  by  the  people," 
from  what  fountain  did  it  stream?  It  is  a 
conception  imheard  of  where  the  Christian 
religion  has  not  come  to  sovereignty.    It  is 

iPeabody:  Approach  to  the  Social  Question,  p.  160. 


86  THE  OLD  FAITH 

sprung  from  but  one  source,  the  New  Tes- 
tament, and  from  but  one  mind,  that  of  Him 
who  said:  "Ye  know  that  they  who  are 
accounted  to  rule  over  the  Gentiles  lord  it 
over  them;  and  their  great  ones  exercise 
authority  over  them.  But  it  is  not  so  among 
you:  but  whosoever  would  become  great 
among  you,  shall  be  your  minister ;  and  who- 
soever would  be  first  among  you,  shall  be 
servant  of  all."  From  what  ultimate 
human  sources  have  come  the  new  interest 
and  zeal  and  sacrifice  on  behalf  of  a  reor- 
ganization of  society  to  secure  justice  both 
in  labor  and  its  rewards  for  the  men  and 
women  in  our  great  industries,  for  the 
deliverance  of  women  from  the  bondage  of 
bitter  conditions  of  employment,  to  rescue 
childhood  from  the  crime  and  tragedy  of 
child-labor?  Only  from  the  New  Testament 
and  the  religion  it  inspires  and  of  which  it 
is  the  charter;  only  from  Him  who  set  a 
child  in  the  midst  and  said,  "Of  such  is  the 
kingdom  of  heaven."  The  workman,  the 
woman,  and  the  child  were  alike  negligible 
before  the  New  Testament  came,  and  are 
negligible   to-day  where   it   has  not  been 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  87 

carried  to  influence  and  power.  India, 
Africa,  and  China,  to  name  none  of  the 
many  others,  are  majestic  witnesses  to  the 
sole  and  singular  ministry  of  the  New 
Testament  and  its  religion  on  behalf  of 
womanhood,  childhood,  and  toil.  And  cry 
out  as  the  enemies  of  the  Church  and  reli- 
gion do,  vehement  as  may  be  their  hostility 
to  the  name  of  Christianity  and  the  profes- 
sions of  Christians,  it  is  nevertheless  the 
spirit  of  the  New  Testament,  the  spirit  of 
the  Christianity  which  they  assail,  that  has 
taken  form  and  voice  in  the  forces  oper- 
ative now  in  the  social  redemption  of  our 
day.  In  clear  and  compelling  fashion 
before  our  very  eyes  the  parable  of  Jesus  is 
being  fulfilled,  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  as  a  bit  of  leaven  which  afterward  leavens 
the  whole  lump.  Back  of  the  boisterous 
and  passionate  sense  of  brotherhood  and 
comradeship  with  which  men  to-day  are 
fighting  so  madly  though  sincerely  for  the 
rights  and  privileges  of  labor,  unacknowl- 
edged perhaps  but  no  less  vital  and  potent, 
is  the  accumulated  drive  of  nineteen  hun- 
dred years  of   Christian  ideas  slowly  but 


88  THE  OLD  FAITH 

inevitably  pushing  on  to  the  salvation  of 
society.  Whence,  then,  comes  our  increas- 
ing solicitude  for  the  unfortunate,  our 
enlarging  interest  in  the  criminal,  our  wide- 
spread conviction  that  penalty  shall  be 
remedial  ?  From  what  source  have  come  our 
world-wide  activity  against  the  diseases 
which  prey  particularly  upon  the  the  poor, 
our  ever  louder  demands  that  society  shall 
guarantee  housing,  milk,  and  food  supply, 
recreations  and  sanitation  to  those  unable 
to  secure  them  for  themselves?  They  are 
unheard  of  except  in  Christian  civilizations. 
This  sense  of  solidarity  with  the  less  for- 
tunate, this  pressure  of  obligation  to  those 
for  whom  life's  battle  has  been  unjust  and 
imequal,  come  only  from  Him  who  drew 
his  picture  of  the  final  judgment  as  pro- 
ceeding on  the  basis  of  our  ministry  to  our 
brethren  in  temporal  things;  who  said  that 
"Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  unto  one  of  these 
.  .  .  ye  did  it  unto  me."  The  new  democ- 
racy, in  other  words,  is  the  world  rediscov- 
ering religion ;  it  is  humanity  coming  farther 
forward  unto  Christ. 
A    parallel    result    of    democracy,    seen 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  89 

thus  clearly  in  its  subordinate  position,  is 
to  show  the  unalterable  and  unique  char- 
acter of  religion  in  personal  experience. 
Democracy  alone  never  satisfies  the  soul. 
Those  whose  temporal  conditions  are  in 
every  way  comfortable  are  not  thereby  made 
content.  The  social  and  material  conditions 
of  men  and  women  have  steadily  improved 
year  after  year,  but  their  personal  satisfac- 
tion is  as  remote  as  ever.  Democracy  can 
get  men  better  wages,  build  them  better 
homes,  secure  them  better  laws,  provide 
them  better  schools,  eliminate  some  of  their 
diseases,  surround  them  with  a  hundred 
advantages  and  acquisitions  of  comrade- 
ship and  comfort,  but  it  cannot  minister  to 
a  mind  diseased;  it  cannot  defend  them 
from  a  bitter  conscience;  it  cannot  comfort 
them  in  sorrow,  or  deliver  them  from  sin,  or 
light  the  darkness  of  the  grave.  Democracy 
cannot  guarantee  the  virtue  of  woman  or 
the  integrity  of  men.  It  can  produce  liberty 
but  cannot  prevent  lust.  In  the  midst  of 
perfect  democracy,  if  that  be  all,  there  will 
still  be  broken  hearts  and  blasted  hopes, 
and  sinful,  shameful  deeds,  and  the  fear  of 


90  THE  OLD  FAITH 

death.  In  the  supreme  reahties  of  the  per- 
sonal Hfe  democracy  is  but  a  name  and  the 
shadow  of  substance  that  is  passed.  As 
Matthew  Arnold  whispered  to  himself  the 
last  day  of  his  life  on  earth,  "The  cross  still 
stands,  and  in  the  straits  of  the  soul  makes 
its  ancient  appeal."  And  the  cross  is  not 
the  symbol  of  democracy  but  the  seal  of  reh- 
gion.  Democracy,  I  said,  introduces  man 
to  himself.  Religion  introduces  man  to 
God.  This  is  the  fundamental  necessity 
without  which  democracy  can  only  deepen 
discontent  as  it  satisfies  the  body  while  leav- 
ing the  soul  impoverished.  "Thou  hast 
made  us  for  thyself,  and  our  heart  finds  no 
rest  until  it  rests  in  thee."  Amid  the  pomps 
and  pageantry  of  England's  world-wide 
empire,  Rudyard  Kipling  saw  the  truth: 

The  tumult  and  the  shouting  dies, 
The  captains  and  the  kings  depart; 

Still  stands  thine  ancient  sacrifice, 
An  humble  and  a  contrite  heart. 

The  age  in  which  we  live,  with  its  passion- 
ate enthusiasm  for  brotherhood,  for  polit- 
ical   justice,    for    social    opportunity,    for 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  91 

industrial  righteousness,  its  sacrificial  labor 
for  the  oppressed,  the  unfortunate,  and  the 
poor,  confirms  as  never  before  the  supreme 
and  inevitable  character  of  religion  and  the 
world's  need  of  it.  The  age  in  which  we 
live  is  crying  with  a  thousand  voices  the 
inexorable  question  of  our  Lord:  "What 
shall  it  profit  a  man,  if  he  shall  gain  the 
whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul?" 


Ill 

THE  INCREASING  CHRIST 


Less  introspective  than  our  fathers,  more  con- 
cerned with  the  problems  of  social  than  of  indi- 
vidual sin,  we  find  in  Jesus  our  leader  in  the  struggle 
for  social  righteousness,  the  prophet  of  spiritual  de- 
mocracy, the  preacher  and  founder  of  the  kingdom 
of  God.  But  for  us,  too,  as  for  earlier  generations, 
his  personality  retains  its  perennial  freshness.  For 
us,  as  for  them,  he  is  Saviour  as  well  as  leader, 
the  one  in  whom  we  find  the  answer  to  our  indi- 
vidual as  well  as  our  social  need.  If  we  are  to 
define  God  in  terms  of  a  single  character,  it  is  to 
Jesus  that  we  must  turn. 

This  appeal  is  independent  of  the  fluctuations  of 
critical  opinion.  However  the  critics  may  recon- 
struct the  story  that  hes  back  of  the  Gospels,  they 
cannot  alter  the  picture  the  Gospels  present.  Here, 
in  the  pages  of  the  evangelists,  we  meet  a  figure 
so  individual  and  distinctive  that  after  all  the 
lapse  of  centuries  he  still  speaks  to  us  with  a  spiritual 
authority  as  direct  and  compelling  as  that  which 
won  him  his  first  disciples  by  the  lake  shore.  For 
us,  as  for  them,  he  expresses  in  terms  of  a  human 
life  our  highest  thought  of  God. — William  Adams 
Brown:  Modern  Theology  and  the  Preaching  of 
the  Gospel,  p.  207f. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  INCREASING  CHRIST 

The  age  in  which  we  Hve  is  a  complex 
and  questioning  age.  It  is  fed,  in  spite  of 
itself,  from  these  streams  which  flow  from 
out  an  unappreciated  past,  and  swept  at 
the  same  time  by  these  cross  currents  of 
modern  knowledge  and  feeling.  It  has  de- 
veloped new  powers  and  evolved  new  hopes. 
It  has  uncovered  many  falsehoods  and 
discovered  many  truths.  It  has  been  in- 
spired by  many  experiences  and  disillu- 
sioned by  many  more.  It  is  an  age  of 
vaster  resources  and  greater  accomplish- 
ments in  many  directions  than  of  any  before 
it.  To  what  conclusion,  then,  may  we 
come,  if  to  any,  concerning  what,  with 
all  these  changes,  the  age  accepts  as  the 
irreducible  and  adequate  finality  in  religion? 
Science  has  changed  the  terms  in  which  the 
truths  of  religion  can  be  satisfactorily  ex- 
pressed, and  democracy  has  thrust  its  once 

95 


96  THE  OLD  FAITH 

restricted  axioms  into  the  broad  and  temper- 
ing activities  of  social  relationship.  Reli- 
gion has  become  a  matter  of  the  laboratory 
and  the  street,  of  the  astronomer's  instru- 
ments, the  biologist's  microscope,  the  voter's 
booth,  and  the  craftsman's  bench,  where 
formerly  it  was  perhaps  too  much  an  affair 
of  manuscripts  and  altars  and  personal 
introspection.  But  religion  at  heart  and  in 
substance  has  not  changed.  It  is  constantly 
revitalized,  not  destroyed;  vindicated  in 
surprising  fashion,  but  not  banished.  It  is 
as  always  the  revelation  of  and  relation  of 
the  soul  to  the  personal  God.  And  that 
means  what? 

The  preceding  chapters  have  already 
indicated  the  answer  the  present  writer  will 
make  to  the  question.  It  is  the  answer  of 
the  Christian  Church  since  the  Church  be- 
gan. Dr.  Gordon  has  voiced  it  in  a  sin- 
gularly beautiful  sentence,  saying,  "We  are 
here  under  the  shadow  of  an  Infinite  Name ; 
we  are  living  and  dying  in  the  heart  of  an 
enfolding  Presence."  ^  The  age,  to  use  a 
well-worn  word  of  theology,  is  Christocen- 

i  The  Christ  of  To-day,  p.  61. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  97 

trie.  Not  long  ago  the  statement  was 
soberly  made,  in  some  quarter,  that  science 
will  be  the  religion  of  the  future.  It  would 
be  fairly  difficult  to  say  just  what  that 
means;  Israel  Zangwill  tried  to  tell  us, 
though  with  not  an  amazing  success.  But 
whatever  it  means,  science  will  be  the  reli- 
gion of  the  future  only  as  science  becomes 
the  revelation  of  Christ.  The  author  of  a 
letter  which  lies  upon  my  desk  as  these 
words  are  being  written  says,  "I  am  a 
Socialist,  and  to  me  .  .  .  Socialism  is  God's 
way  out."  No  one  can  say  what  Socialism 
is  going  to  be;  but  if  it  is  ever  going  to  be 
God's  way  out,  it  will  be  so  only  when  it 
becomes  the  reincarnation  of  Christ.  Nor 
is  this  simply  the  bold  and  prejudiced 
declaration  of  one  who  pleads  a  case.  Mr. 
Winston  Churchill,  surely  a  very  modern 
Saul  among  the  prophets,  in  an  address  at 
the  University  of  California,  said,  "It  will 
be  strange  indeed  if  we  do  not  arrive  at  the 
conclusion  that  the  world  has  still  in  Jesus 
Christ  something  to  grow  into  instead  of 
out  of,  and  that  when  we  shall  have  reached 
the  new  boundaries  he  has  set,  it  will  be 


98  THE  OLD  FAITH 

time  enough  to  think  of  a  new  prophet  and 
a  new  rehgion."  From  quite  a  different 
direction,  and  one  to  which  a  large  part  of 
Christendom  has  been  looking  with  great 
apprehension  and  not  a  little  fear,  comes 
the  authoritative  declaration  of  the  Rev. 
George  Jackson,  that  "the  net  result  of  the 
fierce  conflict  which  has  raged  for  the  last 
seventy-five  years  around  the  New  Testa- 
ment documents  has  been  to  make  clearer 
than  ever  the  solidity  of  the  historical  basis 
of  Christianity  and  the  incomparable  posi- 
tion of  Christ  as  the  supreme  Person  of 
historj^"  ^ 

Than  this  subject  of  the  Person  of  Christ, 
there  is  none  before  the  thoughtful  minds 
of  our  generation  more  imperious  and  im- 
portant. Unless  all  signs  fail  we  are  well 
into  the  beginning  of  a  controversy  con- 
cerning it  comparable  only  to  the  mighty 
debates  of  the  fourth  century.  "Who  was 
Jesus?  What  was  the  purpose  of  his  life 
and  teaching?  What  significance  have  he 
and  his  message  for  the  striving  multitudes 
of  to-day?"  These  are  the  questions  which 

1  Jackson:  The  Preacher  and  the  Modern  Mind,  p.  104. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  99 

the  authors  of  a  recent  able  review  of  liberal 
thought  say  "are  becoming  matters  of  the 
greatest  consequence  to  the  whole  of  hu- 
manity." ^  To  them  other  inquiries  are 
added:  "Have  we  still  the  right  to  preach 
this  Jesus  to  others?  Has  he  not  become 
the  object  of  the  greatest  doubt  on  our 
part?"  And  it  is  in  an  attempt  satisfac- 
torily to  answer  these  questions  that  the 
volume  cited  has  been  produced. 

But  liberal  theology,  as  it  is  technically 
called,  can  never  answer  these  questions.  It 
confines  itself  to  too  restricted  an  area  of 
investigation.  It  seeks  "to  present  an  ac- 
count of  Jesus  as  he  appears  in  the  light  of 
a  scientific  study  of  the  historical  records" 
— which  is  very  good,  with  certain  serious 
qualifications,  one  of  which  is  that  it  shall 
be  guided  by  the  records  and  not  emasculate 
or  distort  them,  that  it  may  reach  its  precon- 
ceptions. But  the  main  weakness  of  this 
liberal  Christology  is,  as  the  Rev.  Maurice 
Jones  has  well  written,  "that  it  draws  a 
portrait  of  Jesus  which  does  not  overstep 


'Weinel  and  Widgery:  Jesus  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  and  After, 
p.  27. 


100  THE  OLD  FAITH 

the  limits  of  the  human,  and  yet  claims  for 
this  conception  of  the  Ideal  Man  the  very- 
extremes  of  spiritual  value,  and  sets  him  up 
as  an  object  of  religious  worship."  ^  The 
fault  with  this  school  of  scientific  theology 
is  that  it  has  too  exclusively  a  backward 
look.  It  is  well  to  search  for  and  to  find 
the  historical  Jesus;  but  the  mighty  effects 
which  have  followed  his  exaltation  into  the 
theological  Christ,  against  which  liberal 
Christology  protests,  are  too  real,  too  per- 
manent and  powerful,  to  be  dismissed  as 
having  flowed  from  nothing  more  than  the 
mental  aberration  or  social  enthusiasm  or 
religious  fervor  of  the  first-century  disciples 
of  the  Ideal  Man.  The  historical  Christ 
is  more  than  a  figure  in  the  New  Testament 
records  and  the  chance  allusions  of  a  Roman 
historian;  he  is  a  force  in  the  history  which 
has  followed  down  these  nineteen  centuries, 
and  it  is  in  them,  as  well  as  in  the  docu- 
mentary records,  that  he  is  to  be  discovered. 
There  has  been  comment  enough  on  the 
theological  cry  of  modern  years,  "Back  to 
Christ !"  but  this  much  may  yet  be  said :  that 

1  Maurice  Jones:  The  New  Testament  in  the  Twentieth  Century,  p.  21. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  101 

when  you  have  gone  back  to  Christ  you  find 
that  he  has  gone  on.  He  is  the  same  yester- 
day, to-day,  and  forever;  but  it  is  not  a 
sameness  either  in  size  or  meaning  or  power. 
It  is  a  sameness  in  motive  and  spirit.  Christ 
comes  to  the  world,  out  of  a  thousand  wist- 
ful dreams  and  prayers  and  hopes  of  men, 
and  takes  his  place  as  a  figure  in  history,  a 
man  of  Galilee,  the  citizen  of  a  Roman 
province,  a  member  of  a  Hebrew  tribe,  a 
participant  in  an  historic  religion  already 
centuries  old.  He  never  travels  beyond  the 
little  land  in  which  he  was  born ;  is  untouched 
by  the  literature  and  art,  the  civilizations, 
politics,  and  cultures  which  lie  out  beyond 
his  own  people;  he  knows  nothing  of  alien 
life  or  faith  or  customs ;  speaks  no  language 
but  the  provincial  tongue  of  the  common 
people  of  his  race.  He  lives  the  life  of  an 
artisan  and  is  familiarly  known  as  such 
until  the  age  of  thirty;  then  for  not  more, 
and  probably  for  less,  than  three  years 
wanders  from  city  to  city  and  town  to  town 
and  field  to  mountain,  a  prophet  without 
honor  in  his  own  country.  In  the  capital  of 
his  people  he  comes  into  collision  with  the 


102  THE  OLD  FAITH 

ecclesiastical  system  and  authorities,  and  on 
a  charge  of  treason  to  Rome,  is  executed  as 
a  common  criminal  by  the  Roman  govern- 
ment. A  man  of  specific  time,  in  a  restricted 
geographical  area,  of  a  marked  and  isolated 
race,  of  a  strict  and  exclusive  religious  sect 
— that  is  the  historic  Jesus.  Immediately, 
however,  he  becomes  more.  In  all  the  vary- 
ing expressions  of  our  religion,  through  all 
its  changing  moods  and  emphasis,  suited  to 
every  age,  appropriate  to  every  condition, 
the  citizen  of  every  country  and  the  spirit 
of  every  advance,  he  fulfills  the  farthest 
interpretations  of  his  own  declaration,  "I 
came  that  they  may  have  life,  and  may  have 
it  abundantly." 

He  fits  perfectly  into  the  scheme  of  the 
first  century  of  our  era,  and  yet  the  latest 
and  most  progressive  mind  has  not  over- 
taken him.  Simon  Peter,  in  the  days  of 
his  flesh,  said:  "Lord,  to  whom  shall  we  go? 
Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life."  And 
eighteen  hundred  years  later  Johann  Fried- 
rich  Strauss,  who  began  the  long  hostility 
of  destructive  criticism,  wrote  that  "Christ 
is  the  one  character  without  the  idea  of 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  103 

whom  in  the  mind  personal  piety  is  impos- 
sible," '  while  John  Stuart  Mill,  who,  if 
ever  a  man  could  be  cold  intellect  devoid  of 
religious  experience  and  sympathies,  was 
that  man,  has  left  on  record  his  judgment, 
saying,  "That  which,  after  all,  to  me  would 
be  the  best  and  highest  form  of  life  would 
be  to  live  as  Jesus  Christ  would  have  ap- 
proved." Whatever  forms,  amid  the 
streaming  influences  that  beat  upon  it  now, 
our  religion  shall  from  time  to  time  assume, 
unless  it  shall  utterly  cease  to  be,  it  can 
never  be  separated  from  Jesus  Christ,  who 
is  "the  image  of  the  invisible  God,  the  first- 
born of  all  creation:  .  .  .  and  he  is  before 
all  things,  and  in  him  all  things  consist  .  .  . 
that  in  all  things  he  might  have  the  pre- 
eminence." Nor  is  this  in  the  narrower 
limits  of  what  we  designate  as  "religious" 
life  and  thought.  "Christ  is  the  creator  of 
our  human  world.  The  worth  of  the  indi- 
vidual, the  reality  of  social  union,  the  sanc- 
tity of  home,  the  infinite  meaning  of  love, 
the  eternal  validity  of  our  ideas  of  right- 
eousness, freedom,  and  God,  all  the  ultimate 

1  Cf.  Carpenter:  Witness  to  the  Influence  of  Christ,  p.  30. 


104  THE  OLD  FAITH 

realities  of  our  human  world,  are  the  crea- 
tion of  Christ."  ' 

He  is  the  one  constantly  increasing  per- 
sonality and  influence  in  the  social  life  and 
institutions  of  humanity.  All  local,  tem- 
poral, and  sectarian  characteristics  slip 
away  from  him.  He  becomes  the  universal 
figure.  Set  him  beside  the  teachers  and 
religious  leaders  of  the  world,  and  the  differ- 
ence is  immeasurable.  Buddha  is  always 
the  same.  He  is  a  figure  of  a  remote  cen- 
tury, of  a  singular  social  order,  of  a  specific 
type  of  thought  and  feeling.  Confucius 
never  changes.  He  is  Chinese  to  the  core 
and  never  otherwise.  He  makes  no  appeal 
beyond  his  own  race.  The  walls  of  China 
are  down  but  he  does  not  cross  the  border. 
Mohammed  is  Arab  to-day,  as  he  was  when 
he  fled  for  his  life.  Millions  of  people  name 
him  as  their  souls'  Lord,  but  they  are  not 
world-wide  people.  He  too  speaks  to  cer- 
tain minds  and  aff'ects  certain  kinds  of  sym- 
pathies. All  of  these  are  separate  from  the 
religion  they  brought.  Cut  Buddha  out  of 
Buddhism  and  it  will  make  no  difference. 

I  Gordon:  Christ  and  To-day,  p.  31. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  105 

Discover  that  Confucius  borrowed  all  his 
wisdom  and  Confucianism  is  as  strong  as 
ever.  Mohammed  passes  and  may  be  for- 
gotten, but  Mohammedanism  is  unimpaired. 
It  is  not  so  with  Christ.  Born  a  Hebrew, 
his  language  knows  no  provincialisms.  He 
speaks  to  men  of  all  ages,  climates,  coun- 
tries, degrees  of  culture,  and  depths  of  deg- 
radation. His  truth  and  its  disciples  live 
under  the  skies  which  Mohammedanism 
calls  its  own,  multiply  among  the  followers 
of  Confucius  and  the  languorous  India 
of  the  Buddha.  The  morals  of  these  other 
teachers  are  colored  by  the  customs,  char- 
acter, and  traditions  of  race  and  society. 
The  morals  of  Jesus  have  neither  modifi- 
cations nor  adjustments;  they  are  the  same 
in  all  continents  and  among  all  peoples 
in  all  social  orders.  This  Jew  of  a  distant 
century  and  a  minor  province  has  become 
the  chief  figure  before  two  hundred  and 
fifty  millions  of  people,  of  all  races,  lan- 
guages, and  customs,  and  to  none  of  them 
does  he  seem  to  be  either  a  Jew  or  a  figure 
of  the  past  or  with  provincial  and  restricted 
sympathies.     Neither  can  he  be  disassoci- 


106  THE  OLD  FAITH 

ated  from  the  religion  which  bears  his  name. 
The  disciples  of  these  other  religious  teach- 
ers have  recourse  in  the  experiences  of  life 
to  the  words  of  their  book,  the  sayings  of 
the  sage,  the  formulas  of  the  saint.  The 
author  of  the  book,  the  sage,  and  the  saint 
are  immaterial.  In  the  experiences  of  life 
his  followers  turn  not  to  Christianity  but  to 
Christ. 

Through  Him  the  first  fond  prayers  are  said 
Our  lips  of  childhood  frame; 

The  last  low  whispers  of  our  dead 
Are  burdened  with  His  name. 

And  this  expansion  of  the  personality  of 
Christ  until  he  is  the  universal  figure,  the 
native  of  all  countries,  the  Kinsman  of  all 
men,  is  reflected  in  the  extension  of  the  prin- 
ciples and  spirit  which  he  has  enunciated  and 
incarnated  in  the  life  of  nations.  Certain 
supercilious  folk,  whose  wide  travels  in  the 
flesh  have  not  removed  the  insulation  from 
their  minds,  are  fond  of  remarking  that 
Christianity  is  only  a  minor  quantity  com- 
pared with  the  other  great  religions  of  the 
world;  and  they  quote  the  numerical 
strength  of  Buddhism  with  its  400,000,000 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  107 

adherents  and  Mohammedanism  with  its 
140,000,000.  But  the  test  of  rehgion  is  not 
its  numbers  but  the  kind  of  Hfe  it  produces. 
And  by  that  test  how  do  these  rehgions 
stand?  In  five  hundred  years  their  adher- 
ents and  the  civihzation  they  have  produced 
have  not  made  a  single  contribution  to  the 
sum  of  human  knowledge,  have  not  written 
a  new  law,  developed  a  new  tenderness, 
broadened  by  an  inch  the  sympathies,  or 
uplifted  for  a  moment  the  hopes  of  society 
and  men,  except  as  they  themselves  have 
been  stimulated,  though  perhaps  uncon- 
sciously, by  some  influences  of  Christianity. 
In  the  life  of  the  world  and  its  institutions 
they  are  a  negligible  quantity.  The  world 
at  large,  its  thought,  its  art,  its  politics,  all 
its  multiplying  activities  are  dominated  by 
the  Christian  nations. 

Going  a  step  farther,  the  standards  and 
ideals  of  social  and  national  life  which  are 
universally  recognized  as  the  best  and  most 
elevating,  are  standards  and  ideals  derived 
from  the  teaching  and  the  spirit  of  Christ. 
One  of  the  striking  sayings  of  Jesus,  quoted 
by  John,  is  that  "the  prince  of  this  world 


108  THE  OLD  FAITH 

hath  been  judged."  It  was  never  so  true 
as  now.  Diplomacy,  commerce,  adminis- 
tration, society,  all  have  been  judged;  they 
measure  their  permanence  and  worth  by 
their  approximation  to  the  spirit  and  the 
motive  of  Christ,  and  even  now  amid  the 
noise  of  navies,  the  tramp  of  armed  men,  the 
roar  of  forge  and  factory  where  munitions 
of  war  are  being  made  in  increasing  quan- 
tities, amid  the  din  of  battle  shouts  and 
threats,  steadily  the  tide  of  human  senti- 
ment is  rising  against  war  as  it  rose  against 
slavery,  and  when  the  day  shall  come  when 
battles  shall  be  only  memories  and  guns  be 
mute,  the  world  will  own  the  triumph  of  the 
Prince  of  Peace. 

This  seems  to  lie  a  long  time  ahead.  But 
the  time  is  on  the  way.  The  transformation 
of  humanity  takes  a  long  time.  Christ  called 
men  brothers,  and  Paul  said  that  in  Christ 
there  is  neither  bond  nor  free;  but  it  took 
eighteen  hundred  years  before  there  were 
no  slaves  in  North  America.  A  long  time 
ahead,  but  it  is  there  and  swinging  nearer 
with  every  revolution  of  the  planet!  The 
famous  mosque  in  Saint  Sophia,  now  a  Mo- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  109 

hammedan  stronghold,  was  formerly  a 
Christian  church,  one  of  its  chief  features 
being  a  great  fresco  of  Christ.  In  1888  the 
Sultan  of  Turkey,  seeing  it,  said,  "Cover 
it !  His  time  is  not  yet  come."  ^  "Not  yet 
come"  but  coming!  In  greater  fashion  than 
ever  his  forerunner  dreamed,  "He  must  in- 
crease," till  the  knowledge  of  God  shall 
cover  the  earth  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea. 

But  this  expansion  of  the  life  and  spirit 
of  Christ  in  the  society  and  institutions  of 
humanity,  great  and  fruitful  as  it  is,  is  not 
the  sum  of  his  increasing  influence.  He  is 
the  increasing  influence  and  personality  in 
the  intellectual  life  of  the  world.  Philos- 
ophy for  all  its  centuries  has  been  seeking 
for  a  clue  to  the  existence  and  order  of  the 
world,  but  one  after  another  its  systems  fail. 
Each  makes  contribution  to  the  quenchless 
onreach  of  the  minds  of  men,  but  all  end  in 
and  tacitly  admit  their  incompleteness.  It 
is  to  be  remarked,  further,  that  those  artic- 
ulated schemes  whereby  the  sages  think  to 
light  the  problem  are  found  to  be  of  con- 
tinuing value  in  proportion  as  they  square 

>  Quoted  in  Noble:  Redemption  of  Africa,  volmnel,   p.  78. 


110  THE  OLD  FAITH 

with  the  rehgious  instincts  of  humanity,  and 
particularly  as  they  square  with  the  reli- 
gious instincts  which  are  confirmed  and  cul- 
tivated in  the  New  Testament.  All  of 
them,  however,  are  inadequate.  On  Her- 
bert Spencer's  Synthetic  Philosophy,  with 
its  Christless  evolution,  the  dust  has  already 
begun  to  gather.  From  the  majesty  of 
Hegel,  with  his  spirit  coming  into  conscious- 
ness through  history,  to  the  misery  of  Hart- 
mann,  the  pessimism  of  Schopenhauer,  and 
the  madness  of  Nietzsche,  even  the  solid 
enduring  dignity  of  Kant — with  all  that  they 
have  done  in  disciplining  human  thought 
and  quickening  the  human  spirit,  all  are 
incomplete,  the  best  of  them  haunted  by  the 
wistful  unacknowledged  appeal  of  Chris- 
tian faith. 

Our  little  systems  have  their  day, 

They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be; 
They  are  but  broken  lights  of  thee, 

And  thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they. 

Philosophy  has  found  no  permanent  and 
satisfying  explanation  of  the  world;  but  a 
philosophical  scientist  like  Bergson  is  mak- 
ing place  for  Christ  in  his  theory  of  its  con- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  111 

tinuous  unfolding,  and  the  later  writers 
are  almost  all  influenced  by  Christ's  pres- 
ence, and  compelled  to  shape  their  specu- 
lations to  account  for  him.  It  is  philos- 
ophy catching  up  with  the  New  Testament, 
modern  intellect  overtaking  Saint  John 
to  hear  him  say:  "All  things  were  made 
through  him;  and  without  him  was  not 
anything  made  that  hath  been  made.  In 
him  was  life;  and  the  life  was  the  light  of 
men."  It  is  the  writers  of  modern  thought 
translating  in  spite  of  themselves  the  writer 
to  the  Hebrews,  who  nineteen  centuries  ago 
spoke  of  Jesus  as  one  "for  whom  are  all 
things,  and  through  whom  are  all  things." 
It  is  Christ  increasing  in  the  intellectual  life 
of  humanity. 

This  increase  is  demonstrated  perhaps 
more  practically  by  the  increasing  alle- 
giance to  Christ  on  the  part  of  the  intellec- 
tual men  of  modern  times.  President 
George  R.  Grose,  of  De  Pauw  University, 
is  authority  for  the  statement  that  three  of 
the  most  prominent  scholars  of  Harvard 
University  of  the  past  decade — one  a  phi- 
losopher, one  a  psychologist,  and  one  a  geol- 


112  THE  OLD  FAITH 

ogist — began  their  careers  as  materialists 
or  agnostics,  but  before  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century  were  avowed  Christians. 
"Fifty  years  ago,"  he  says,  further,  "the 
drift  of  philosophic  thought  in  the  univer- 
sities of  Europe  and  America  was  toward 
the  side  of  unbelief;  to-day  the  great  lead- 
ers in  education  and  the  large  majority  of 
the  student  body  are  Christian  believers."  ^ 
President  Remsen,  of  the  Johns  Hopkins 
University,  he  quotes  as  saying  with  great 
earnestness:  "I  think  I  have  some  right  to 
speak  on  this  question,  having  devoted  my 
life  to  the  study  of  science.  And  I  say  to 
you  the  most  scientific  life  that  I  know  is 
the  Christian  hfe."  " 

Turn  to  that  body  of  formulated  think- 
ing which  most  easily  shapes  and  reflects  the 
thought-life  of  the  age,  literature  and  the 
drama,  and  the  discovery  there  is  striking. 
Granted  that  never  before  was  there  so 
much  frivolity  and  trash  exploited  in  fiction, 
and  never  so  much  that  is  tawdry  and  cheap 
on  the  stage,  yet  no  earlier  age  ever  wit- 


1  Outlook  for  Religion,  p.  17. 

2  Op.  cit.  18f. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  113 

nessed  an  enthusiasm  for  Christ  on  the  part 
of  literature  and  the  drama  such  as  our  age 
witnesses.  Hall  Caine's  White  Prophet, 
Marie  Corelli's  Master  Christian,  Elsa 
Barker's  The  Son  of  Mary  Bethel,  Suder- 
mann's  Magda,  and  Maurice  Maeterlinck's 
Mary  Magdalene,  and  the  whole  phase  of 
the  literature  of  New  Testament  themes; 
Moody's  The  Faith  Healer,  Jerome's  Pass- 
ing of  the  Third  Floor  Back,  Kennedy's 
Servant  in  the  House  and  The  Terrible 
Meek,  and  Churchill's  Inside  of  the  Cup, 
Peabody's  The  Piper,  and  a  whole  school 
of  European  prose,  poetic,  and  dramatic 
literature  of  the  last  twenty  years  are  wit- 
nesses to  his  enlarging  place  in  modern 
thought.  It  comprises  a  body  of  writers  so 
notable  and  significant  that  already  books 
are  being  written  about  it,  and  the  author  of 
one  of  such  critical  and  reviewing  volumes 
characterizes  his  work  and  the  age  itself  as 
The  Promise  of  the  Christ- Age  in  Recent 
Literature.  And  this  increasing  influence 
and  place  of  Christ  as  a  motif  in  the  liter- 
ature of  men  is  not  more  marked  and  signif- 
icant than  the  place  in  literature  occupied 


114  THE  OLD  FAITH 

by  the  few  fragments  of  his  utterances 
which  have  been  preserved  for  us.  Alto- 
gether apart  from  the  influence  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  particularly  the  Gospels, 
in  the  whole  life  of  succeeding  centuries; 
apart  from  the  fact  that  behind  every  sig- 
nificant movement,  institution,  and  reform 
in  society,  government  and  religion  have 
been  the  New  Testament  and  its  specific 
declaration  and  spirit,  the  words  of  Jesus, 
themselves,  hold  high  position  among  the 
literary  masterpieces,  and  are  gathering  an 
increasing  estimate  and  appeal.  "What  is 
the  most  touching  story  ever  told?"  Charles 
Dickens  was  asked.  He  replied  at  once, 
"The  story  of  the  prodigal  son."  Coleridge 
counted  the  Beatitudes  the  finest  passage  in 
all  literature,  and  Booth,  asked  by  a  friendly 
company  to  recite,  melted  all  the  circle  as 
he  repeated  the  Lord's  Prayer.  Edmund 
Burke  once  declared  that  the  supreme  docu- 
ment on  the  rights  of  man  was  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount.  "Look  on  our  divinest  Sym- 
bol: on  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  his  life,  and 
his  biography,  and  what  followed  therefrom. 
Higher  has   the   human  thought  not  yet 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  115 

reached:  this  is  Christianity  and  Christen- 
dom." ^  And  Goethe,  the  supreme  intellect 
of  German  literature  and  life,  a  few  days 
before  his  death  prophesied  the  passing  of 
all  divisions  among  men  in  anticipation  of 
the  time  when  they  should  have  reached 
their  largest  life  and  freedom  through  hav- 
ing fully  comprehended  and  inwardly  expe- 
rienced the  pure  teaching  and  love  of  Jesus 
Christ.^  Not  yet,  but  coming!  we  have  not 
yet  discerned  the  fullness  of  his  stature,  but 
in  the  widening  life  of  mind  and  thought, 
as  in  the  realm  of  nations,  governments,  and 
society  the  day  is  hastening  on  by  prophet 
bards  foretold  when  "of  his  kingdom  there 
shall  be  no  end." 

In  the  details  of  the  practical  conduct 
of  life,  as  distinguished  from  the  verified 
but  no  less  personal  generalizations  and  the 
intellectual  moods  and  movements  cited 
above,  Christ  is  increasingly  the  determin- 
ing, if  unacknowledged  influence.  It  is 
almost  trite  at  this  late  day  to  remark  that 
the  payment  of  twenty  millions  of  dollars 


1  Carlyle:  Sartor  Resartus,  p.  170. 

*  Compare  Hillis:  Influence  of  Christ  in  Modern  Life,  pasaim. 


116  THE  OLD  FAITH 

to  Spain  for  the  Philippine  Islands,  and  the 
expenditure  of  money  and  men  in  the  pa- 
tient, sacrificial  development  of  the  Filipino 
people  toward  self-government  and,  what  is 
more  vital,  capacity  for  self  government, 
was  an  immeasurable  advance  upon  any- 
thing the  Old  Testament  in  its  highest  vi- 
sion of  national  ethics  had  ever  seen,  or 
urged.  It  was  far  in  advance  of  any  prec- 
edent the  world  had  offered  in  the  relations 
of  a  victorious  to  a  vanquished  nation.  It 
squares  only  with  the  spirit  of  Christ  inter- 
preted in  a  larger  way  than  even  the  first 
century  interpreted  him.  The  passion  for 
brotherhood  also,  which  to-day  is  working 
out,  in  turbulent  as  well  as  peaceful  forms, 
the  industrial  reformation  and  social  heal- 
ing which  bulk  so  large  in  the  business 
of  democracy,  finds  its  germ  in  the  human 
life  of  Christ  and  its  charter  in  his  new 
commandment  to  love  one's  neighbor  as 
oneself.  It  has  often  been  remarked,  and 
not  infrequently  with  an  emphasis  too  little 
qualified,  that  the  discontent  and  hostility 
of  the  industrial  order,  however  bitter 
toward  the  Church,  is  never  other  than  cor- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  117 

dial  and  reverent  toward  Christ.  There  are 
exceptions,  of  course,  to  this  repeated 
declaration,  though  taken  broadly  it  is  un- 
doubtedly true.  But  the  significance  of  the 
place  of  Christ  in  the  social  thinking  of  to- 
day is  even  more  clearly  seen  in  the  inability 
of  even  the  least  reverent  schools  of  thought 
to  get  along  without  him.  The  daring  voices 
of  an  earlier  generation,  which  in  their  en- 
thusiasm for  man  and  their  hatred  of  injus- 
tice, unrebuked  by  ecclesiasticism,  cried  out 
against  God,  religion,  and  the  Bible,  are 
now  growing  faint.  The  Industrial  Work- 
ers of  the  World,  it  may  be  said  in  paren- 
thesis, carry  banners  inscribed,  "No  God 
and  No  Master,"  but  for  all  the  tumult  they 
make  from  time  to  time,  like  many  other 
turbulences,  history  is  against  them.  The 
forces  of  sanity  rather  than  of  violence 
make  the  enduring  contributions  to  life, 
and  the  dangers  to  human  institutions 
are  not  those  of  destruction  but  of  disin- 
tegration. The  leaders  of  modern  social 
movements,  antagonistic  as  they  may  be 
to  the  established  forms  and  uncompromis- 
ing as  they  may   be   with  the   traditional 


118  THE  OLD  FAITH 

conceptions  of  society,  turn  Christward  for 
reenforcement  and  inspiration.  Kalthoif 
and  Bouck  White  and  their  industrial 
and  hterary  comrades,  are  neither  pro- 
found thinkers  nor  accurate  expositors; 
their  apparent  knowledge  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament is  happily  free  from  many  salient 
facts;  the  Christ  of  their  strabismic  vision 
is  singularly  independent  of  much  of  the 
express  declaration  of  the  Gospels.  But 
their  exposition,  inadequate  as  it  often  is, 
only  emphasizes  the  impossibility  of  main- 
taining any  humanitarian  enterprise  of 
large  effectiveness  and  permanence,  apart 
from  the  reenforcements  of  his  character 
and  teaching,  while  the  undisputed  spring 
and  power  of  the  modern  social  program 
derive  from  its  appeal  to  the  Hebrew 
prophets  as  they  are  interpreted  by  the 
Christian  mind,  and  to  the  words  of  Christ. 
Here,  however,  we  face  the  commonest 
peril  of  much  of  our  modern  thinking  about 
Christ,  namely,  that  we  shall  think  of  him 
as  a  presence  and  influence  and  spirit  in 
these  vaster  historic  and  racial  movements 
— in  society  and  government  and  literature 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  119 

and  philosophy — and  lose  sight  of  his  pri- 
mary and  supreme  meaning  for  the  indi- 
vidual soul.  The  older  artificial  expressions 
and  standards  of  religion  no  longer  serve; 
the  elder,  stiff er,  precise,  and  binding  form- 
ulas are  no  longer  received.  We  conceive 
of  God  in  different  fashion,  we  have  another 
view  of  the  Bible,  we  regard  the  Church  dif- 
ferently, we  put  professions  of  personal  reli- 
gion to  different  tests.  We  see  Christ  after 
a  manner  other  than  the  generations  before 
us  saw  him.  How,  then,  does  it  stand  with 
the  individual  soul  and  the  person  of  Christ  ? 
Here  too  he  is  the  increasing  Christ ;  as  out 
of  all  their  scientific  theory  and  social  exper- 
iment men  are  learning  with  new  emphasis 
that  the  old  needs  of  the  soul  remain  unal- 
tered amid  whatever  new  conditions  of  life 
may  be  and  new  outlooks  of  mind.  I  do 
not  name  all  the  phases  of  personal  expe- 
rience wherein  the  proof  may  be  made,  for 
two  will  be  sufficient. 

Christ  is  increasingly  the  power  and  hope 
of  the  individual  soul  in  its  experience  of  sin. 
Whatever  else  may  be  swept  away  by  the 
amazing  researches  and  achievements  of  the 


120  THE  OLD  FAITH 

modern  mind,  this  remains.  Science  may- 
seem  to  trace  the  biography  of  sin  and  take 
away  its  ancient  meaning;  but  science  can- 
not take  away  the  sense  of  responsibihty, 
the  pressure  of  guilt,  and  the  instinct  for 
retribution.  Democracy  may  locate  the 
social  sources  and  spread  the  individual  re- 
sponsibility upon  society  at  large.  But 
beating  past  all  the  bulwarks  modern 
thought  has  presumed  to  raise  around  the 
soul,  the  sense  of  individual  and  personal 
obligation  and  misdeeds  and  failure  crowds 
home  upon  the  heart;  and  there  is  no 
help  or  healing  in  all  the  fine  and  gracious 
theories  and  conduct  of  the  Christless  day. 
From  them  a  soul  may  learn,  if  it  need 
to  learn,  the  way  to  health  and  service; 
from  them  it  may  gather,  if  it  need  to 
gather,  wise  counsel  and  alluring  hope. 
But  what  the  soul  finds  it  needs  is  not 
knowledge  but  strength.  It  does  not  care 
how  it  got  in  this  way,  and  it  is  not 
enough  to  learn  how  it  is  possible  to  get  out ; 
it  must  somehow  have  the  power  of  getting 
out.  It  is  not  information  a  soul  needs 
but  enduement;  not  a  map  but  an  energy; 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  121 

not  a  description  but  a  deliverance.  "Who 
shall  deliver  me  out  of  the  body  of  this 
death?"  This  is  the  cry  of  the  soul,  a  cry 
not  all  the  streaming  influence  of  modern 
knowledge  and  enthusiasm  can  stifle.  "I 
thank  God  through  Jesus  Christ  our 
Lord."  That  is  the  abiding  answer  and 
experience.  "We  have  some  beautiful  reli- 
gions in  China,"  a  Chinese  student  said, 
"teaching  us  the  loftiest  morality,  but  they 
have  no  dynamic  behind  them,  no  driving 
force  to  help  a  man  to  victory.  Christianity 
not  only  calls  us  to  a  noble  life — it  enables 
us  to  live  it.  It  not  only  tells  us  to  be  good 
— it  gives  us,  by  the  power  of  the  crucified 
and  risen  Jesus,  the  strength  to  be  good."  ^ 
That  is  the  unalterable  personal  experience 
— the  experience  of  sin  and  responsibility 
and  impotence;  and  here  is  the  unaltered 
complement  to  that  experience — the  re- 
deeming power  of  Christ  in  personal  life. 
Yonder  it  is  Jerry  McAuley  transformed 
in  a  cell  in  a  New  York  jail;  there  it  is 
Governor  Patterson,  of  Tennessee;  here  it 
is  an  outcast  at  some  Helping-Hand  Mis- 

1  Atkins:  Life  Worth  While,  p.  lOlf. 


122  THE  OLD  FAITH 

sion;  everywhere,  through  all  gradations  of 
society  and  self-respect  and  culture,  in  all 
variations  of  circumstances  and  opportunity 
and  habit,  the  witness  of  the  passing  years 
is  to  Christ  of  personal  experience  and  per- 
sonal power. 

So  too  Christ  is  increasingly  the  hope  and 
refuge  of  the  soul  in  its  quenchless,  death- 
less hunger  for  conscious  and  personal  life 
beyond  the  grave.  It  may  be  that  in  the 
years  past  the  achievement  of  personal  im- 
mortality bulked  too  exclusively  in  the 
thought  of  religious  men  and  was  too  ex- 
clusively the  business  of  the  organized 
Church.  In  legal  proceedings  instituted  in 
Kansas  City  some  time  ago,  the  petition  de- 
fining the  Holy  Roman  Apostolic  Church 
affirmed  that  "The  object  of  this  society  is 
to  obtain  eternal  happiness  for  the  individ- 
ual after  death."  And  that  has  been,  not 
only  for  Romanism  but  for  too  much  of 
Protestantism,  the  only  apparent  object  of 
the  Church.  That,  as  we  have  come  to  see, 
is  one  of  the  objects,  but  only  one;  the  pri- 
mary object  is  not  happiness  in  the  next 
world  but  holiness  in  this.     And  yet  the 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  123 

hope  of  future  happiness  is  one  of  the  great- 
est inspirations  to  present  holiness.  "Im- 
mortahty,"  as  Dr.  Gordon  has  written,  *'is 
the  leverage  of  righteousness,  the  power  by 
which  humanity  is  raised  out  of  the  depths 
of  habits  and  vices  worse  than  animal;  it  is 
the  vast  support  of  the  spirit  against  the 
flesh,  the  infinite  ally  of  love  against  bru- 
tality, the  necessary  and  mighty  postulate 
of  the  true  life  of  mankind."  ^  Thomas 
Huxley  might  very  well  regard  with  horror, 
as  he  wrote  to  John  Morley,  the  prospect  of 
annihilation.  And  yet,  for  all  the  wistful- 
ness  and  quenchlessness  of  the  desire  for  im- 
mortality, where  is  there  any  convincing 
ground  of  hope  of  it?  John  Fiske  put  the 
whole  case  for  man  apart  from  Divine 
revelation,  when  he  said,  "I  believe  in  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  not  in  the  sense  in 
which  I  accept  the  demonstrable  truths  of 
science,  but  as  a  supreme  act  of  faith  in 
the  reasonableness  of  God's  work."  ^  That 
is  better  than  nothing,  though  Huxley,  a 
greater  scientist  than  Fiske,  could  not  find 


'  Witness  to  Immortality,  p.  299. 
»  The  Destiny  of  Man,  p.  116. 


124  THE  OLD  FAITH 

even  that  much.  But  how  poor  and  unsat- 
isfying that  is!  Beside  that  stands  Christ, 
a  figure,  the  supreme  figure,  of  history  and 
yet  a  very  living  personal  reality  to  the  indi- 
vidual soul.  "Who  .  .  .  brought  life  and 
immortality  to  light."  "I  know  him,  whom  I 
have  believed,  and  I  am  persuaded" — not  as 
to  the  reasonableness  of  God's  work — but 
"that  he  is  able  to  guard  that  which  I  have 
conmiitted  unto  him."  The  mystery  of  it 
may  be  admitted  at  once;  and  for  all  our 
theological  dexterity  and  the  rhetorical  ease 
with  which  it  is  possible  for  not  a  few  inter- 
preters to  explain  in  detail  the  whole  proc- 
ess of  Christian  faith,  the  explanations  do 
not  explain.  But  with  the  mystery  ad- 
mitted, the  fact  remains  that  with  him  in 
personal  experience,  death  becomes  a  door- 
way into  life;  its  night  falls  but  to  usher  in 
the  endless  morning  where  those 

.  .  .  "Angel  faces  smile 
Which  we  have  loved  long  since,  and  lost  awhile." 

It  is  not  simply  a  theory  which  has  to  be 
accounted  for;  it  is  this  indubitable  fact  of 
personal  certitude  and  peace  which  must  be 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  125 

reckoned  with  in  any  portrayal  of  the  posi- 
tion of  Christ  in  hfe.  It  is  not  a  matter  of 
scholarship  or  special  insight  or  singular 
training;  it  is  the  experience  of  men  and 
women  without  regard  to  condition  of  life 
or  knowledge  or  social  inheritance,  that  they 
and  their  dead  shall  live  by  the  power  of 
their  personal  relation  to  Jesus  Christ.  No 
man  w^ho  has  observed  even  casually  the 
procession  of  bereavement  among  the  lives 
with  which  he  comes  in  contact  but  will  be 
impressed  increasingly  with  the  ineffable 
force  with  which  Christ,  as  Matthew  Arnold 
said  of  the  cross,  in  the  straits  of  the  soul 
makes  his  ancient  appeal.  A  single  illus- 
tration will  be  permitted  as  typical  of  the 
form  in  which  the  fact  of  certitude  univer- 
sally expresses  itself  and  vainly  demands  ex- 
planation from  those  who  would  believe  that 
the  day  of  Christ  is  waning.  The  writer  sat 
one  sunmier  evening  on  the  deck  of  a  freight 
schooner  lying  at  anchor  in  a  North  Carolina 
port.  The  captain  sat  beside  him.  The  day's 
work  was  done,  and  together  they  watched 
the  shadows  deepen  on  the  shore  and  turn 
what  Homer  would  have  called  the  wine- 


126  THE  OLD  FAITH 

dark  water  of  the  sound  into  black.  "One 
by  one,  in  the  infinite  meadows  of  heaven, 
blossomed  the  lovely  stars."  The  wind 
stirred  softly  in  the  cordage  while  the 
schooner  swung  with  the  changing  tide.  In 
the  frank  confidences  which  twilight  so  sing- 
ularly brings  to  even  reticent  souls,  the  cap- 
tain talked  much  about  his  past.  A  strong 
man  he  was,  toughened  by  forty  years  upon 
the  water,  knowing  every  nook  and  corner 
of  the  bays  and  coasts  and  inlets  where  he 
sailed,  a  master  of  winds  and  tides  and  cur- 
rents. His  had  been  a  life  of  hardship  and 
exposure,  of  labor  and  loss  and  disappoint- 
ment. He  had  read  little.  The  intellectual 
movements  of  the  day  were  out  of  his  ken 
entirely  and  he  was  equally  a  stranger  to  its 
political  and  social  activities.  He  had  no 
theories  and  no  sentimentality.  He  read 
the  Old  Testament  and  understood  little  of 
it;  much  of  the  New  was  beyond  his  com- 
prehension. As  he  talked  of  the  past  it  was 
doubtless  inevitable  that  he  should  speak 
quietly  of  his  greatest  personal  sorrow,  the 
loss  of  his  little  girl;  and  with  that  painful 
detail  which  is  characteristic  of  untrained 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  127 

minds  he  spoke  of  the  blue  of  her  eyes  and 
the  gold  of  her  childish  curls.  He  told  of 
her  death,  with  the  pathos  of  her  winsome 
attempt  to  ease  their  grief  as  she  whispered, 
"You  needn't  be  afraid;  there  isn't  any  river, 
there's  only  a  little  stream,"  and  then  she 
crossed  it  while  they  held  her  hands  and 
wept.  And  that  had  been  twenty  years  be- 
fore, but  there  on  the  deck  of  the  swinging 
schooner  the  captain  was  wiping  his  tears 
on  the  back  of  his  knotted  hand.  "I  tell 
you,"  he  said,  "it's  going  to  be  good  to  see 
her  when  I  get  there." 

At  the  other  extreme  of  life,  to  complete 
the  illustration  of  this  insistent  certitude,  is 
Lord  Acton,  with  his  encyclopedic  learning, 
saying  to  his  dying  daughter,  "Be  glad,  my 
child,  you  will  soon  be  with  Jesus  Christ."  ^ 
Where  do  men  get  this  hope  and  confidence 
and  peace  in  the  long  stress  of  unforgettable 
bereavement  and  the  harassing  adventure 
of  their  dying?  Not  from  any  thought  of 
the  reasonableness  of  God's  work;  not  from 
any  theory  of  probabilities;  only  from  the 
historic  Christ  become  a  living  presence  and 

^  Letters  to  Mary  Gladstone,  chap.  izxv. 


128  THE  OLD  FAITH 

power  in  personal  experience.  It  is  here, 
then,  that  we  find  the  only  answer  to  the 
question  with  which  the  chapter  began  as 
to  what  the  age  is  accepting  as  the  irreduc- 
ible and  adequate  finality  of  religion.  It 
is  the  living  Christ.  Here  are  the  sense  and 
experience  of  sin  and  the  quenchless  hope 
of  immortality ;  and  religion,  if  it  is  to  make 
any  appeal  whatever,  must  meet  and  an- 
swer that  experience  and  that  hope.  They 
constitute  the  supreme  constraints  of  human 
experience.  They  must  find  their  satis- 
factory answer  in  another  experience  deep 
enough  and  supernatural  enough  and  self- 
evidencing  enough  to  command  humanity 
at  all  times  and  in  all  conditions,  and  they 
find  it  only  in  Christ.  "If  any  man  sin,  we 
have  an  Advocate  with  the  Father,  Jesus 
Christ  the  righteous :  and  he  is  the  propitia- 
tion for  our  sins;  and  not  for  ours  only,  but 
also  for  the  sins  of  the  whole  world."  "And 
this  is  life  eternal,  that  they  should  know 
thee  the  only  true  God,  and  him  whom  thou 
didst  send,  even  Jesus  Christ." 

Amid  our  busy  generation  many  voices 
call.    Men  and  women  earnestly  intent  on 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  129 

an  intelligent  faith  and  an  effective  religious 
conduct  do  well  to  heed.  We  dare  not  lose 
touch  with  the  day  in  which  we  hve,  or  grow 
deaf  to  its  characteristic  appeal.  But  in  it 
all  our  confidence,  our  strength,  our  hope, 
our  victory,  will  lie,  as  they  have  lain  down 
nineteen  hundred  years  of  tumultuous  his- 
tory, in  the  faith  once  delivered  unto  the 
saints;  for  we  are  "built  upon  the  founda- 
tion of  the  apostles  and  prophets,  Christ 
Jesus  himself  being  the  chief  comer  stone." 


IV 
THE  VINDICATED  SCRIPTURES 


We  must  know  what  it  is  that  we  want  to  verify 
before  we  attempt  the  process  of  verification.  .  .  . 
That  revelation  is  a  process  in  history  prepares  us 
to  believe  that  it  will  find  its  verification  in  life. 
And  especially  I  would  emphasize  that  much  in 
Scripture  is  the  direct  creation  of  experience.  The 
Bible  is  preeminently  a  book  of  experimental  re- 
ligion. What  experience  has  created  we  may 
expect  experience  to  verify.  .  .  .  But  obviously  the 
religious  element  in  the  Bible  is  all  that  religious 
experience  can  directly  verify. — PeaJce:  The  Bible: 
Its  Origin,  Its  Significance,  and  Its  Abiding  Worth, 
p.  470f. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  VINDICATED  SCRIPTURES 

The  question  which  the  present  age  in- 
sistently demands  concerning  the  Scriptures 
is,  Are  they  true?  It  is  practically  a 
modern  question,  for  the  time  has  not  long 
passed  when,  except  by  the  heretic,  it  had 
not  been  even  raised.  There  was  a  time  not 
long  since  when  the  Bible  stood  before  the 
Protestant  as  the  Church  stands  before  the 
Roman  Catholic — the  absolute  authority  for 
thought  and  life,  concerning  which  a  doubt 
was  a  deadly  sin.  This  is  not  the  place  to 
trace  the  history  of  modern  thought  con- 
cerning the  Bible.  It  will  be  sufficient  to 
say  that  the  study  of  the  Scriptures,  under 
the  new  light  and  with  the  new  instruments, 
at  the  hand  of  later  scholars,  from  the  crit- 
ical and  historical  viewpoint,  has  given  us 
practically  a  new  Book.  What  kind  of  an 
influence  the  Bible  used  to  have  and  what 
was  the  common  method  of  reading  it,  may 
be  best  seen  through  the  mind  of  John  Bun- 
133 


134  THE  OLD  FAITH 

yan,  who  writes  in  that  marvelous  autobio- 
graphy of  his: 

I  was  almost  made,  about  this  time,  to  see  some- 
thing concerning  the  beasts  that  Moses  counted 
clean  and  unclean.  I  thought  those  Beasts  were 
Types  of  Men;  the  clean,  types  of  them  that  were 
the  people  of  God;  but  the  unclean,  types  of  such 
as  were  the  Children  of  the  wicked  One.  Now,  I  read 
that  the  clean  beasts  Chewed  the  cud;  that  is, 
thought  I,  they  show  us  we  must  feed  upon  the 
Word  of  God.  They  also  parted  the  hoof;  I  thought 
that  signified  we  must  part,  if  we  would  be  saved, 
with  the  ways  of  ungodly  men.  And  also,  in  fur- 
ther reading  about  them  I  found,  that  though  we 
did  chew  the  cud  as  the  Hare,  yet  if  we  walked 
with  Claws  like  a  Dog,  or  if  we  did  part  the  Hoof 
Hke  the  Swine,  yet  if  we  did  not  chew  the  cud  as 
the  Sheep,  we  were  still,  for  all  that,  but  unclean; 
for  I  thought  the  Hare  to  be  a  type  of  those  that 
talk  of  the  Word,  yet  walk  in  the  ways  of  sin;  and 
that  the  Swine  was  like  him  that  parteth  with 
his  Outward  pollutions,  but  still  wanteth  the  Word 
of  Faith,  without  which  there  could  be  no  way  of 
salvation,  let  a  Man  be  never  so  devout.^ 

It  is  not  to  be  questioned  that  the  conclu- 
sions   which    Bunyan    reaches    concerning 


1  Grace  Abounding,  ^71. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  135 

personal  religious  life  are  sound,  and  true 
to  scriptural  teaching;  but  it  is  no  longer 
possible  to  draw  those  conclusions  from  that 
particular  scripture  or  those  like  it,  in  that 
highly  artificial  and  allegorical  fashion.  To 
leap  a  long  line  of  detailed  criticism  which 
has  become  a  commonplace  in  modern  think- 
ing about  the  Bible,  our  later  scholarship 
has  shown  it  to  us  as  a  collection  of  liter- 
ature, separable  into  various  kinds,  distin- 
guishable as  to  purpose,  circumstances, 
authorship  and  date,  a  Hterature  to  be  ap- 
proached as  such  and  to  be  subjected  as 
such  to  the  same  standards  of  criticism  to 
which  other  literatures  are  subjected.  For 
it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  it  is  the  liter- 
ary quality  of  many  portions  of  the  Bible 
which  keeps  its  figures  and  the  influence  of 
their  lives  so  widely  before  us.  Ex-Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  called  attention  to  this  in  his 
lecture  before  the  University  of  Oxford — 
"The  ruthless  death  scene  between  Jehu  and 
Jezebel ;  wicked  Ahab,  smitten  by  the  chance 
arrow,  and  propped  in  his  chariot  until  he 
died  at  sundown;  Josiah,  losing  his  hfe  be- 
cause  he   would   not   heed   the   Pharaoh's 


136  THE  OLD  FAITH 

solemn  warning,  and  mourned  by  all  the 
singing  men  and  all  the  singing  women — 
the  fates  of  these  kings  and  this  king's 
daughter,  are  part  of  the  common  stock  of 
knowledge  of  mankind.  They  were  petty 
rulers  of  petty  principalities ;  yet,  compared 
with  them,  mighty  conquerors,  who  added 
empire  to  empire,  Shalmaneser  and  S  ar- 
gon, Amenotep  and  Rameses,  are  but 
shadows;  for  the  deeds  and  the  deaths  of 
the  kings  of  Judah  and  Israel  are  written 
in  words  that,  once  read,  cannot  be  forgot- 
ten." ' 

This  critical  study  of  the  Scriptures,  as 
carried  on  by  the  specialists  into  whose 
labors  we  have  entered,  has  transformed  the 
Bible  from  being  an  object  almost  of  wor- 
ship into  an  inspiration  for  life,  and  has 
given  Protestantism  at  last  the  spiritual 
liberty  of  the  individual  which  it  long  ago 
professed  to  have  won  but  really  had  not. 
The  change  of  attitude  toward  the  Bible, 
however,  was  not  without  serious  perils,  as 
the  Church  immediately  discerned.  The 
danger  of  this  present-day  attitude  is  that 

1  History  as  Literature,  p.  24. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  137 

the  method  of  approach  shall  be  regarded 
as  the  paramount  interest ;  and  that  the  crit- 
ical character  of  our  general  Bible  reading 
shall  rob  us  of  our  spiritual  reenf  or  cement. 
The  present  generation  as  it  reads  the  Bible 
at  all  insists  on  what  it  calls  the  new  point 
of  view  and  spends  much  of  its  time  on 
matters  of  date  and  authorship,  distinguish- 
ing in  the  narratives  between  the  legendary 
and  the  historical,  between  the  actual  and 
the  metaphor.  Instead  of  Moses  penning 
the  solemn  story  of  creation  and  recording 
the  sublime  procession  of  Israel  from  Eden 
to  the  promised  land,  we  are  shown  dim 
figures  of  seer  and  poet  toiling  in  the  pre- 
historic mists,  and  the  cold  hands  of  cal- 
culating priests  shaping  a  code  of  religion 
and  social  conduct.  Instead  of  revelation 
chiefly  by  miracle  we  are  given  revelation 
through  history;  for  the  ancient  prophets 
foretelling  in  magic  fashion  the  events  of 
years  and  centuries  to  come,  we  have  a  line 
of  statesmen  wrestling  with  political  and 
social  problems,  and  a  series  of  unknown 
editors  rearranging  into  permanence  their 
literary  and  forensic  work.    For  the  pyro- 


138  THE  OLD  FAITH 

technic  splendors  of  some  sudden  burst  of 
vision  such  as  we  were  brought  up  to  beheve 
was  Saint  John's  experience,  we  have  dis- 
criminated a  special  body  of  apocalyptic  lit- 
erature, after  patient  scrutiny  of  which  we 
are  led  to  believe  the  seer  formed  his  own 
supreme  production.  Instead  of  the  mys- 
terious and  illogical  but  remarkably  persist- 
ent theory,  expressed  or  tacitly  presumed, 
of  verbal  inspiration,  we  have  version  after 
version  and  revision  upon  revision.  Getting 
back  through  the  errors,  imaginings,  and 
misconceptions  of  generations  past;  laying 
bare  the  life  out  of  which  the  Book  has 
come;  searching,  with  growing  apprecia- 
tion, through  the  social  and  intellectual 
processes,  the  historical  sequences,  the  racial 
aptitudes  and  popular  languages  out  of 
which  and  by  which  the  revelation  has  been 
made,  we  are  more  and  more  approximating 
to  the  mind  of  the  Spirit.  We  are  getting 
a  Bible  to  speak  to  men,  no  longer  of  the 
eighth  century  before  Christ,  or  the  first  or 
the  fifteenth  century  after  Christ,  but  to 
men  in  a  new  world  and  a  new  day.  We  are 
getting  a  vessel  large  enough  to  carry  the 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  139 

hopes  and  loves  and  longings  of  men  and 
to  reveal  God  and  Christ  and  salvation  to 
men,  not  in  a  narrow  world  with  shallow 
skies  and  mysterious  seas  and  feeble  hands 
and  shortened  outlooks,  but  in  a  world  of 
infinite  spaces  and  infinite  time,  of  seas  their 
thought  has  spanned,  and  skies  their  minds 
have  rifled,  to  whom  God  and  the  universe 
are  vaster  by  an  immeasurable  degree  than 
any  men  before  them  ever  dreamed. 

Eut,  however  necessary  this  is  to  a  com- 
plete understanding  of  the  documents  with 
which  we  are  dealing,  at  most  it  is  only 
preparatory  to  the  real  business  of  the  sin- 
cere reader.  In  these  pursuits  the  scholars 
have  only  been  making  possible  a  more  in- 
telligent and  spiritual  appreciation  of  the 
Scriptures  as  a  whole;  they  have  been  mak- 
ing straight  in  the  desert  of  no  little  con- 
fusion a  highway  for  our  God.  Unhappily, 
not  only  scholars  but  young  men  and 
young  women  in  the  schools  and  churches, 
and  older  men  and  women  in  the  hard  and 
testing  bewilderment  of  practical  life,  have 
permitted  the  peculiarities  of  the  highway 
to  obscure  for  them  the  presence  of  God 


140  THE  OLD  FAITH 

upon  it ;  they  have  become  so  concerned  with 
the  criticism  of  the  Bible  that  its  message 
is  miheard. 

Another  and  even  more  threatening 
danger,  to  the  superficially  informed  mind, 
is  that  presumed  in  some  quarters  to  have 
arisen  from  the  discoveries  of  modern 
science.  The  former  conflict  between  reli- 
gion and  science  was  long  since  seen  to  be 
unnecessary,  and,  indeed,  impossible,  except 
by  a  few  belated  intelligences,  but  the 
matter  is  adequately  summarized  by  Pro- 
fessor Peake  in  his  volume  on  the  Bible: 
"First  geology,"  he  writes,  "and  then  the 
theory  of  evolution  were  imagined  to  have 
disposed  of  the  claims  made  on  behalf  of 
the  Bible  with  its  six-days'  scheme  and 
its  doctrine  of  special  creation  and  the 
brief  period  that  it  allows  for  the  existence 
of  man  on  this  planet.  And  in  this  conflict 
with  the  Bible  the  physical  and  biological 
sciences  have  been  reenforced  by  archaeol- 
ogy. We  have  now  evidence  not  simply  for 
the  antiquity  of  man  but  for  the  develop- 
ment of  an  elaborate  civilization  at  a  period 
earlier  than  that  to  which  the  Biblical  chron- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  141 

ology  assigns  the  creation  of  the  human  race. 
I  pass  over  the  other  points  in  the  quarrel, 
such  as  the  creation  of  the  heavenly  bodies 
on  the  fourth  day,  or  the  questions  raised 
touching  the  historical  character  of  the 
Deluge.  And  here  in  particular  it  is 
thought  that  the  advance  of  these  sciences 
has  hit  Christianity  in  a  vital  place.  The 
Pauline  theology,  we  are  told,  is  built  on 
the  assumption  that  the  third  chapter  of 
Genesis  contains  a  record  of  literal  fact, 
and  this  assumption  has  now  been  proved 
to  be  incorrect."  ^ 

Long  ago  it  was  realized  by  the  leading 
minds  of  the  Church  that  the  criticism  of 
the  Bible  from  the  viewpoints  of  literature, 
history,  and  science  has  empowered  instead 
of  impoverished  it;  and  the  most  searching 
critics  have  again  and  again  proven  them- 
selves to  be  the  most  devout  Christians. 
They  have  not  changed  the  message  of  the 
Book,  but  the  emphasis.  "Once  we  have 
grasped  the  principle  that  revelation  has 
come  as  a  process  in  history,"  to  quote 
again    from    Professor    Peake's    thorough- 

iThe  Bible:  Its  Origin,  Its  Significance,  Its  Abiding  Worth,  p.  6. 


142  THE  OLD  FAITH 

going  volume,  "Scripture  is  invested  for  us 
with  a  new  significance."  ^  There  are,  how- 
ever, many  honest-minded  men  and  women 
who  have  not  yet  apprehended  this,  and  who 
can  see  only  disaster  from  a  method  of  judg- 
ment which  seems  to  pick  and  choose  among 
what  they  have  been  accustomed  to  consider 
the  whole  Word  of  the  Lord. 

There  are  Bible  readers,  for  instance,  who 
say  that  if  the  early  chapters  of  Genesis 
are  not  actually  historical;  if  the  story  of 
Jonah  and  the  whale  is  the  literary  form  into 
which  the  majestic  truth  of  the  universal  love 
of  God  is  cast  instead  of  being  an  actual 
event  in  the  biography  of  Jonah  and  the 
physiology  of  the  whale;  if  the  Gospels  are 
not  single-minded  and  direct  stories  of  the 
life  of  Jesus,  written,  as  it  were,  at  a  sitting 
and  by  the  very  men  whose  names  they  bear, 
but  are  the  final  result  of  the  apostolic  age, 
preserving  through  various  stages  of  de- 
velopment the  figure  and  the  message  of 
Jesus  Christ;  if,  in  other  words,  the  Bible 
is  to  be  thus  separated  into  its  various  forms 
of  literature,  the  product  of  the  same  his- 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  468f. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  143 

topical  and  racial  forces  out  of  which  all  other 
literature  springs,  and  if  it  is  to  be  judged  as 
other  literature  is  to  be  judged,  then  it  can' 
exercise  no  more  authority  over  us  than  any 
other  literature  can  exercise;  and,  saying 
that,  and  concerned  with  the  results  of  the 
literary  criticism  of  the  Bible,  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  its  other  and  profounder  meaning,  it 
becomes  a  literary  classic,  read,  if  at  all, 
with  the  same  spirit  and  attitude  which  they 
bring  to  the  literature  of  India  or  China, 
to  the  poetry  of  Homer  or  the  history  of 
Thucydides. 

Then  there  is  a  second  class — men  and 
women  who  go  further,  taking  the  position 
that  either  the  Bible  is  true  or  it  is  not  true. 
They  do  not  distinguish,  save  in  the  most 
superficial  manner,  between  different  books, 
in  their  criticism;  they  make  no  allowances 
for  differences  in  the  portions  of  the  Bible 
as  to  date,  place,  purpose,  and  circum- 
stance. But  they  declare,  for  instance,  that 
if  the  first  chapters  of  Genesis  are  not  lit- 
eral history;  if  the  story  of  Jonah  and  the 
whale  is  not  literally  true;  if  a  real  angel 
of  the  Lord  did  not  smite  the  hosts  of  Sen- 


lU  THE  OLD  FAITH 

nacherib  in  a  single  night,  but  the  figure  is  a 
metaphor  for  the  plague  arising  from  the 
noxious  swamps  of  Pelusium — ^if,  in  short, 
a  shadow  of  suspicion  can  be  cast  upon  the 
most  extravagant  statement  of  Scripture, 
then  the  whole  Bible  is  untrustworthy,  and 
the  Christian  tradition  and  the  individual 
Christian  belief  are  without  foundation. 

To  these  two  classes  of  minds  certain  re- 
plies may  be  made  in  passing.  To  the  men 
and  women  who  accept  the  methods  and 
results  of  modern  criticism,  and  who,  there- 
fore, decide  that  the  Bible  can  have  no 
authority  other  than  that  of  any  literature, 
it  must  be  candidly  answered,  in  the  words 
of  Principal  Fairbairn,  that  "authority  be- 
longs to  the  Bible,  not  as  a  book,  but  as  a 
revelation ;  and  it  is  a  revelation,  not  because 
it  has  been  canonized,  but  because  it  contains 
the  history  of  the  Redeemer  and  our  redemp- 
tion." ^  It  must  also  be  said  that  the  only 
authority  to  which  the  human  mind  dare  sub- 
ject itself  is  the  authority  of  the  truth,  and 
that  the  truth  is  truth  wherever  it  may  be 
found,  and,  furthermore,  it  is  to  be  con- 

1  Fairbairn;  Place  of  Christ  in  Modern  Theology,  p.  508. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  145 

fessed  that  the  only  element  in  the  Bible 
which  demands  our  assent  is  the  truth  of  it. 
To  the  other  folks  who  will  throw  overboard 
the  whole  body  of  the  Scripture,  if  the  most 
suspicious  fragment  is  deemed  questionable, 
the  reply  must  be  made  that  the  truth  can- 
not be  thrown  overboard,  and  everything  but 
the  truth  ought  to  be. 

*' Truth,  in  short,"  as  it  has  been  put  in 
one  of  the  most  suggestive  chapters  on  the 
subject,  "is  the  only  thing  which  has  author- 
ity for  the  mind,  and  the  only  way  in  which 
truth  finally  evinces  its  authority  is  by  tak- 
ing possession  of  the  mind  for  itself."  ^ 

At  this  point  the  question,  so  much  in  the 
air  if  not  under  discussion.  What  of  in- 
spiration? will  intrude  itself  on  many  minds. 
And  to  that  it  must  be  answered  that,  what- 
ever inspiration  is,  it  cannot  change  the  con- 
stitution of  truth.  That  two  and  two  make 
four  is  just  as  true  whether  you  claim  in- 
spiration for  it  or  not.  A  thing  is  true  not 
because  it  is  inspired,  but  because  it  is;  a 
thing  is  untrue  not  because  it  is  uninspired, 
but  because  it  is;  and  no  amount  of  inspira- 

1  Jackson:  The  Preacher  and  the  Modern  Mind,  p.  97f. 


146  THE  OLD  FAITH 

tion  and  no  lack  of  inspiration  can  make  the 
truth  more  true  or  the  false  less  false. 

The  problem,  then,  before  the  individual 
mind  to-day,  restless  one  way  or  another 
under  the  influence  of  modern  biblical  crit- 
icism, is  not  to  decide  off-hand  as  to  the 
authority  of  the  Scriptures,  nor  to  define  in- 
spiration and  its  result,  nor  to  determine  the 
date  and  authorship  of  a  book,  nor  to  build 
defenses  around  some  miracle,  nor  to  tear 
some  miracle  from  the  record;  the  problem 
is  first  to  discover  the  truth  of  the  Bible. 
And  what  is  the  test  of  truth  ?  Not  the  form 
in  which  it  is  stated,  nor  the  identity  of  the 
author  of  the  form,  nor  the  presence  or  ab- 
sence of  certain  miraculous  elements  in  the 
formula.  Outside  of  the  realm  of  pure 
mathematics,  which  are  so  called  because  we 
are  not  able  to  apply  them  to  the  practical 
bread-and-butter  business  of  life,  there  is  no 
test  of  truth  except  the  results  which  follow 
the  practical  application  of  the  formula. 
How  do  we  know  that  two  and  two  make 
four?  By  accepting  and  applying  the 
formula,  with  no  previous  question  as  to  the 
probability  of  the  truth,  or  the  miraculous  or 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  147 

unmiraculous  elements,  or  the  authorship  of 
the  statement.  How  do  we  know  the  exist- 
ence of  the  force  defined  in  the  law  of  gravi- 
tation ?  By  seeing,  as  Newton  saw,  an  apple 
fall.  The  test  of  truth  is  its  results ;  and  the 
truth  of  the  Bible  must  be  discovered  or  dis- 
proven  by  its  results  in  life. 

It  will  not  be  out  of  place  in  a  volume  of 
this  kind  to  quote  two  passages  from  the 
Gospel  of  Luke  which  will  serve  to  illustrate 
the  only  adequate  method  of  discerning  the 
truth  of  the  Bible : 

And  it  came  to  pass,  when  he  drew  nigh  unto 
Bethphage  and  Bethany,  at  the  mount  that  is 
called  Olivet,  he  sent  two  of  the  disciples,  saying. 
Go  your  way  into  the  village  over  against  you; 
in  which  as  ye  enter  ye  shall  find  a  colt  tied,  whereon 
no  man  ever  yet  sat:  loose  him,  and  bring  him.  And 
if  anyone  ask  you,  Why  do  ye  loose  him?  thus 
shall  ye  say,  The  Lord  hath  need  of  him.  And 
they  that  were  sent  went  away,  and  found  even 
as  he  had  said  unto  them. — (Luke  19.  29-32.) 

And  the  day  of  unleavened  bread  came,  on 
which  the  passover  must  be  sacrificed.  And  he 
sent  Peter  and  John,  saying.  Go  and  make  ready 
for  us  the  passover,  that  we  may  eat.  And  they 
said   unto  him.   Where   wilt   thou   that   we   make 


148  THE  OLD  FAITH 

ready?  And  he  said  unto  them,  Behold,  when 
ye  are  entered  into  the  city,  there  shall  meet  you 
a  man  bearing  a  pitcher  of  water;  follow  him  into 
the  house  whereinto  he  goeth.  And  ye  shall  say 
unto  the  master  of  the  house.  The  Teacher  saith 
unto  thee,  Where  is  the  guest  chamber,  w^here  I 
shall  eat  the  passover  with  my  disciples?  And  he 
will  show  you  a  large  upper  room  furnished:  there 
make  ready.  And  they  went,  and  found  as  he  had 
said  unto  them:  and  they  made  ready  the  pass- 
over.— (Luke  22.  7-13.) 

The  problem  imposed  on  the  disciples  in 
each  of  these  instances  is  exactly  the  problem 
imposed  on  us — the  discovery  of  truth.  The 
various  bypaths  v^hich  are  open  to  our  minds 
as  we  face  the  Bible  v^ere  open  to  their  minds 
as  they  faced  Jesus,  at  the  very  beginning 
of  their  journeys  into  the  city.  What  reason 
had  they  for  believing  that  they  would  find 
the  colt?  Was  this  certainty  of  Jesus  the 
result  of  some  miraculous  adjustment  he 
had  wrought  beyond  their  knowledge,  or 
merely  the  result  of  a  prearrangement  of 
which  they  were  ignorant?  Was  it  likely 
that  any  man  would  permit  two  strangers 
to  take  his  property  in  this  free-hand 
fashion?     And  was  it  likely  that  any  man 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  149 

with  a  water  pitcher  would  be  at  the  place 
designated  just  at  the  time  they  would  be 
there,  when  they  did  not  even  know  just 
when  they  would  arrive?  When  everyone 
in  the  city  was  preparing  for  the  feast  in 
much  the  same  fashion,  was  it  probable  there 
would  be  only  one  man  with  a  water  pitcher 
there  ?  How  would  he  recognize  them  as  be- 
ing sent;  and,  in  any  event,  was  it  at  all 
likely  that  he  would  give  two  strangers  pos- 
session of  his  guest  room,  without  more 
definite  and  detailed  identification?  All 
these  questions  might  naturally  arise  before 
them;  and  if  they  had  sought  to  determine 
the  trustworthiness  of  Jesus  by  the  specu- 
lative method  so  disastrously  applied  to  the 
Scripture  by  those  who  mistake  the  province 
and  purpose  of  literary  and  historical  crit- 
icism, they  would  never  have  gone  into  the 
city  at  all.  They  did  nothing  of  the  kind, 
however.  They  made  a  personal  test. 
"They  went,  and  found  as  he  had  said  unto 
them."  Experience,  in  other  words,  is  the 
test  of  truth. 

Somewhere   James   Russell   Lowell   has 
written, 


150  THE  OLD  FAITH 

Experience  is  a  dumb,  dead  thing; 
The  victory  is  in  beheving. 

Which  is  true  enough  so  far  as  it  goes,  but 
it  is  not  complete ;  the  victory  is  in  believing, 
but  the  victory  of  belief  is  its  issue  in  expe- 
rience. Here,  of  course,  one  comes  sheerly 
against  the  peril  of  the  misinterpretation  of 
experience;  and  the  possible  different  inter- 
pretations which  may  be  given  of  the  same 
experiences  by  different  minds.  There  is, 
for  instance,  a  certain  well-defined  protest 
on  the  part  of  many  men  and  women,  whose 
sincerity  is  not  to  be  questioned,  against  the 
special  interpretation  which  Christian  folk 
are  in  the  habit  of  giving  to  daily  life.  The 
Christian  mind  is  continually  finding  in- 
dubitable evidences  of  some  providential 
leading  in  life,  certain  inscrutable  marks 
of  God's  interest  and  care.  Good  fortune 
comes  to  such  a  one,  and  he  says,  "God  is 
good  to  me."  Disciplining  experience  of 
loss  or  disappointment  or  pain  or  sorrow 
falls ;  and  he  gravely  affirms  that  God  is  do- 
ing everything  for  the  best.  He  feels  within 
him  some  rich  and  jubilant  spirit  and  he 
bears  witness  then  to  the  companionship  of 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  151 

the  Lord.  He  feels  some  peculiar  oppres- 
sion of  the  mind  on  account  of  which  he  for- 
goes certain  purposes,  or  performs  certain 
tasks  of  charity  or  service;  and  he  says  the 
Spirit  was  guiding  him.  He  feels  a  certain 
humiliation  and  sense  of  rebuke  after  a  hasty 
word,  or  ungenerous  action  or  questionable 
activity,  and  he  says  that  God  was  condemn- 
ing him.  Side  by  side  with  this  man  is  an- 
other who  experiences  the  same  fortune  and 
ascribes  it  to  his  own  labor  and  merit;  who 
has  the  same  trouble,  but  sees  in  it  only  the 
ill  to  which  all  flesh  is  heir;  who  is  chari- 
table but  recognizes  no  leading;  who  is  un- 
generous and  bitter  and  wrong  and  feels  no 
condemnation;  who  is  jubilant  and  finds  the 
cause  in  his  own  physical  health  and  social 
circumstances.  He  lives  his  life  side  by  side 
with  the  Christian  man,  and  the  two  lives 
coincide  as  to  experience,  yet  he  finds  no 
evidence  of  God  and  recognizes  no  mark  of 
Providence.  Such  a  man  protests  against 
the  interpretation  which  the  Christian  has 
given  of  his  life.  Enthusiast,  fanatic,  hyster- 
ical, hypocrite;  such  are  the  terms  with 
which  these  folk  are  pilloried  who  witness 


152  THE  OLD  FAITH 

to  a  divine  experience.  What  answer  can 
be  made  to  this  protest?  First,  that  one's 
own  failure  of  vision  does  not  give  him  the 
right  to  call  his  neighbor  blind ;  and,  second, 
that  the  man  whose  life  is  a  series  of  events 
unconnected  with  any  divine  relationships 
is  a  man  who  may  be  looking  accurately  on 
the  externals,  but  who  has  not  the  primary 
requisite  for  discovering  the  divine  reality 
beneath. 

Imagine,  what  is  quite  possible,  that  as 
these  two  disciples  journey  toward  the  city 
where  they  are  to  find  the  colt,  they  are 
joined  by  two  other  men  who  know  nothing 
of  the  presence  of  Jesus  in  Bethany  and  are 
ignorant  of  his  words  to  the  disciples.  They 
will  see  the  same  incidents  along  the  way, 
and,  coming  with  the  disciples,  they  will  look 
at  the  same  time  on  the  colt  standing  with 
its  patient  mother;  but  the  impulse  to  un- 
loose the  animal  will  not  come  to  them,  and 
the  spectacle  of  their  companions'  boldness 
will  amaze  them;  while  if  they  know  the 
ownership  of  the  beasts  they  will  remonstrate 
with  these  strangers  for  the  liberty  they  are 
taking,  and  to  the  reply,  "The  Lord  hath 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  153 

need  of  him,"  they  will  return  only  impatient 
inquiries  and  urgent  opposition.  Imagine 
two  strangers  overtaking  the  other  disciples 
as  they  journey  into  the  city,  a  few  days 
later,  to  prepare  the  Last  Supper.  They 
will  traverse  the  same  public  square,  before 
their  eyes  the  man  with  the  water  pitcher  will 
pass,  but  the  impulse  to  follow  him  will  be 
wanting,  and  his  upper  room  will  not  enter 
their  thoughts ;  the  connection  by  which  that 
man  appears  to  them  with  the  two  disciples 
whom  they  have  overtaken  will  not  occur  to 
them — in  short,  that  mysterious  procession 
of  sublime  events  which  are  to  culminate  on 
Calvary  will  begin  to  move  before  their  very 
eyes  and  they  will  be  ignorant  of  it  all.  It 
does  not  follow,  however,  that  the  two  dis- 
ciples are  foolish  or  fanatical  or  in  error 
when  they  interpret  these  common  circum- 
stances after  a  special  and  personal  fashion. 
The  difference  is  in  the  observers;  they 
have  totally  different  bases  of  observation 
and  judgment;  the  disciples  have  entered  the 
city  on  certain  conditions,  have,  as  the  begin- 
ning of  their  activity,  a  certain  primary  be- 
lief, and  are  acting  under  the  impulse  of  that 


154  THE  OLD  FAITH 

belief;  and  the  common  and  the  conmion- 
place  reveal  to  them  on  every  hand  the  mind 
and  purpose  of  their  Lord. 

In  the  same  fashion  the  Christian  of  to- 
day who  reads  in  all  the  experiences  of  his 
life  a  divine  meaning  and  rests  his  life  upon 
the  reality  of  God's  interest  in  his  common 
fortune,  has  premises  of  a  certain  kind;  he 
has  admitted  into  his  conduct  of  experience 
a  certain  primary  belief;  he  has  taken  life 
on  certain  clearly  defined  terms;  and  his 
experience  of  life  vindicates  his  belief;  he 
finds  the  afiirmations  of  that  primary  faith 
— Providence,  divine  leading,  the  presence 
of  the  Spirit — coincident  with  his  expe- 
rience. 

It  is  in  that  fashion  that  the  Bible  is  to  be 
put  to  the  test.  For  what  is  the  Bible  ?  Lit- 
erature, you  say,  and  the  word  is  granted 
gladly ;  but  it  is  literature  with  a  special  pur- 
pose. It  is  not  a  book  of  science,  though 
touching  here  and  there  on  the  objects  of 
scientific  research;  and  it  makes  no  claim  to 
scientific  accuracy.  Its  references  to  scien- 
tific themes  are  openly  to  illustrate  and  em- 
phasize certain  kinds  of  truth  totally  out  of 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  155 

the  realm  of  scientific  investigation.  It  is 
not  a  book  of  history,  though  it  contains 
large  portions  of  deliberate  and  serious  his- 
torical character,  but  those  portions  admit, 
on  their  very  face,  that  their  historical  record 
is  written  with  a  special  and  not  a  historical 
aim.  It  is  not  a  book  of  poetry,  though  some 
of  the  world's  greatest  poetry  is  in  it;  but 
its  poetry,  like  its  history,  makes  a  specific 
kind  of  an  appeal,  and  that  not  a  poetic 
appeal.  What  is  the  Bible?  Not  simply  a 
body  of  literature ;  for  when  you  have  separ- 
ated it  into  its  books  and  parts  and  kinds  and 
forms,  and  judged  them  by  purely  literary 
and  historical  canons,  there  is  a  reality  there 
which  your  instruments  have  not  touched 
and  which  your  standards  have  not  reached. 
As  Coleridge  said,  the  Bible  finds  you,  and 
finds  you  at  greater  depths  than  all  other 
books.  "What  other  book  like  this  can 
awaken  dumb  or  sleeping  consciences,  re- 
veal the  secret  needs  of  the  soul,  sharpen  the 
thorn  of  sin  and  press  its  cruel  point  upon 
us,  tear  away  our  delusions,  humiliate  our 
pride,  and  disturb  our  false  serenity?  AVliat 
sudden  lightnings  it  shoots  into  the  abysses 


156  THE  OLD  FAITH 

of  our  hearts!  What  searchings  of  con- 
science are  hke  those  which  we  make  by  this 
hghtr^ 

For  the  Bible,  as  a  whole,  presents,  and 
claims  to  present,  in  the  various  forms  of  lit- 
erature which  make  its  volume,  by  precept 
and  example,  by  warning  and  exhortation, 
infallible  principles  only  for  the  conduct  of 
the  spiritual  life;  and  it  is  worthy  of  more 
than  passing  remark  that  what  have  been 
called  the  "myths  of  creation,"  over  which  so 
many  critical  minds  have  stumbled,  "are 
among  the  most  searchingly  religious  parts 
of  the  book."  ^  If  one  will  compare  them 
with  the  parallel  myths  of  creation  current 
among  other  peoples,  he  will  discover  at  once 
that  there  is  something  more  than  a  record 
here;  there  is  a  spirit  present.  Out  of  its 
entire  sweep  of  literature,  legend  and  his- 
tory, psalm  and  sermon,  biography  and 
epistle,  the  Bible  makes  one  distinct  and  cer- 
tain appeal — that  of  the  spiritual  to  the  spir- 
itual life.  "Testing  this  sacred  volume  by 
human  experience,  we  shall  find  no  words  too 


1  Sabatier,  quoted  by  King:  Religion  as  Life,  p.  112f. 
sHorton:  My  Belief,  p.  123. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  157 

strong  to  express  the  difference  in  degree 
between  the  spiritual,  enhghtening,  search- 
ing power  of  the  Bible  and  that  of  all  other 
religious  books.  Its  influence  confessedly 
stands  unique  as  an  inspiration  to  holiness 
and  righteousness;  unique  in  its  quality  of 
invoking  in  human  hearts  the  consciousness 
of  the  Divine,  the  call  to  the  higher  life  of 
the  Spirit."  ^ 

Coming  to  it,  then,  on  its  own  terms,  not 
unmindful  of  the  fallibility  of  the  human 
instruments  through  which  it  has  been 
brought  to  us;  but  coming,  not  simply  to 
discover  the  evidences  and  results  of  that  fal- 
libility as  seen  in  the  historical  improbability 
of  certain  episodes — without  which  the  grand 
message  would  not  be  impoverished — or  the 
unlikelihood  of  certain  supernatural  inci- 
dents, the  only  question  concerning  which  is 
a  question  of  evidence,  for  the  power  that  has 
wrought  the  miracle  of  life  surely  could  ac- 
complish any  wonder  of  its  manifestation; 
coming  to  the  Bible,  not  to  discover  its  falli- 
bility, nor,  on  the  other  hand,  to  vindicate  a 
preconception  of  minute  and  mechanical  ac- 

^Seaver:  Through  Criticism  to  Christ,  p.  39£. 


158  THE  OLD  FAITH 

curacy  in  subordinate  and  casual  details; 
but  coming  to  it  on  its  own  terms,  to  discover 
its  meaning  for  personal  life — then  one  shall 
find  certain  definite  personal  results  prom- 
ised, altogether  out  of  the  sphere  of  literary 
or  historical  criticism.  One  shall  find  that 
on  certain  conditions  there  are  promised  to 
the  soul  peace,  forgiveness,  providential 
care,  consolation,  the  recognizable  presence 
of  God.  By  the  conduct  of  life  on  the  con- 
ditions laid  down,  and  the  vindication  or  dis- 
proof of  the  results  promised,  and  in  that 
way  only,  will  you  put  the  Book  reasonably 
to  the  test.  It  is  no  argument  against  the 
truth  of  the  Lord's  word  in  these  incidents  I 
have  cited,  that  other  folks  did  not  find  the 
colt  waiting  for  them,  or  the  man  with  the 
water  pitcher  to  lead  them  to  his  house ;  other 
folks  had  not  the  primary  basis  for  such  ex- 
perience. That  one  taking  his  place  outside 
the  sphere  of  Christian  belief  and  allegiance 
has  been  imable  to  discover  in  life  the  Chris- 
tian content  and  character,  that  one  ap- 
proaching the  Bible  from  the  critical  or 
questioning  point  of  view  alone  has  not  been 
able  to  discover  the  authority  of  the  Book, 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  159 

is  an  argument  not  against  but  for  the  Chris- 
tian claim.  When  one  has  fulfilled  the  con- 
dition of  life  such  as  the  Bible  demands  he 
will  be  able  to  discern  the  realities  on  which 
the  Bible  stands ;  when  one  shall  have  taken 
upon  his  life  the  requisite  attitude  of  belief 
and  obedience  he  shall  discover  in  life  all 
those  companionships  of  God  to  which  the 
Bible  witnesses  and  which  one  outside  has 
not  discovered.  "They  went,  and  found  as 
he  had  said  unto  them."  Experience  is  the 
vindication  of  truth. 

Immediately  this  unqualified  assertion  de- 
clares itself  inadequate  as  a  test  of  truth.  In 
the  first  place,  there  are  whole  areas  of  truth 
in  the  Bible  which  experience  cannot  touch, 
and  not  a  little  on  which  experience  throws 
suspicion.  We  can  never,  for  instance,  test 
by  experience  the  meaning  of  the  number  of 
the  Beast  in  the  Apocalypse  or  the  accuracy 
of  the  unknown  author  of  the  book  of 
Esther.  "We  must  not  overlook  the  inher- 
ent limitations  of  experience,  even  when  in- 
terpreted in  the  largest  way,  as  an  instru- 
ment of  verification.  Experience  cannot 
verify  alleged  historical  events  in  a  sacred 


160  THE  OLD  FAITH 

book;  they  must  be  left  to  historical  inves- 
tigation. It  cannot  directly  verify  the  au- 
thorship of  books;  that  is  the  province  of 
criticism."  ^  But  we  need  spend  little  time 
discussing  the  personal  verification  of  the 
historical  and  scientific  declarations  of  the 
Bible.  It  has  already  been  shown — indeed, 
it  is  a  truism  of  all  thinking  about  the  Scrip- 
tures— that  neither  the  character  nor  the 
purpose  of  the  Bible,  as  a  whole  or  in  its  sev- 
eral parts,  is  historical  or  scientific,  but  spir- 
itual and  ethical — in  a  word,  religious.  It 
stands  or  falls  not  by  its  scientific  or  histor- 
ical accuracy,  but  by  its  religious  power. 
The  great  thing  about  it  is  "not  that  it  can 
survive  the  assaults  of  hostile  criticism,  but 
that  it  is  able  to  endure  the  assaults  of  life."  ^ 
There  are  not  a  few  folks  who  labor  hard 
to  discover  and  debate  the  difficulties  in  the 
Old  Testament  narrative;  What  were  the 
"days"  of  creation  ?  Whom  did  Cain  marry  ? 
Why  does  one  chapter  say  that  Noah  took 
seven  animals  of  each  kind  into  the  ark  and 
another  chapter  say  that  he  took  two?    Did 


iPeake:  Op.  cit.,  p.  470f. 

2  Gordon:  The  Christ  of  To-day,  p.  162. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  161 

the  prophet's  ax  head  really  float? — and  go 
on  down  the  long  line  of  hoary  difficulties. 
But  while  they  halt  and  debate  these  ques- 
tions, they  are  not  able  to  escape  the  fact  that 
their  personal  responsibility  toward  the 
Bible  does  not  depend  on  any  or  all  of  these, 
however  they  may  be  answered.  The  Bible 
for  us — and  every  unprejudiced  reader 
recognizes  the  truth  at  once — means  its  total 
spiritual,  moral  and  ethical  message  com- 
pleted with  the  New  Testament.  That  re- 
mark immediately  takes  us  further.  The 
New  Testament  is  not  merely  a  collection 
of  books,  but  a  series  of  intensely  human 
documents,  reflecting  a  generation's  social 
and  religious  phenomena,  a  series  of  docu- 
ments connected  by  the  most  constraining 
personal  interest ;  a  diversity  interwoven  into 
a  unique  and  living  unity.  It  is  a  volume  of 
historical  and  personal  literature  gathering 
around  a  singular  and  self -witnessing  life. 
The  total  impression  of  the  New  Testament 
is  not  drawn  from  the  events  in  history  which 
it  records,  or  the  ethical  and  religious  teach- 
ing which  it  preserves,  but  from  the  powerful 
and  perfect  Character  to  whom  it  is  all  due ; 


162  THE  OLD  FAITH 

so  that  its  complete  meaning — and  every 
honest  reader  of  it  recognizes  the  fact — is 
the  life  and  person  and  work  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Toward  this  unique  and  personal 
unity  the  Old  Testament  is  also  drawn  as 
all  the  plunging  rapids  of  Niagara  are 
drawn  into  the  resistless  whirlpool  toward 
which  they  rush. 

What  is  true  of  the  New  Testament  imme- 
diately becomes  true,  by  retroaction,  of  the 
entire  body  of  Scripture;  and  every  sincere 
reader  well  knows  that  his  vital  concern  with 
the  Bible  is  his  personal  attitude  and  re- 
sponse to  Jesus  Christ  as  foreshadowed  and 
revealed.  The  question  which  everyone 
must  face  is  not,  Did  this  miracle  happen? 
or.  Is  this  history?  or,  Did  John  write  this 
book?  but  What  does  this  whole  volume, 
what  does  this  New  Testament  and  what 
does  this  Christ  say  to  me,  in  the  personal 
and  pressing  experiences  of  my  religious  re- 
sponsibility and  need?  "The  real  and  ter- 
rible test  of  the  Word  of  God,"  to  quote 
again  from  Dr.  Gordon,  "is  applied  by  the 
sinner  who  cries  out  for  forgiveness,  by  the 
spirit    crushed    with    the    consciousness    of 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  163 

moral  infirmity  in  the  presence  of  eternal 
ideals,  by  the  heart  under  the  shadow  of  a 
great  sorrow,  by  the  soul  looking  in  bewilder- 
ment into  worlds  beyond  time."  ^ 

Regardless  of  criticism  and  debate  that 
rage  in  the  remoter  forums  of  a  minute 
scholarship,  the  whole  and  human  appeal  of 
the  Bible  is  an  appeal  not  to  knowledge  but 
to  life.  It  is  because  of  that  fact  that  its 
vindication  is  so  easy  and  its  constraints  so 
unmistakable.  Mr.  Silvester  Home,  in  his 
biography  of  David  Livingstone,  is  respon- 
sible for  the  statement  that  Sekeletu,  one  of 
the  African  chiefs,  "had  no  desire  for  the 
Bible,  fearing  that  it  might  compel  him  to 
content  himself  with  one  wife,"  ^  which  leads 
to  the  complementary  truth  so  aptly  illus- 
trated that  the  man  who  reads  the  Bible  with 
a  sincere  and  quiet  spirit  does  not  need  any- 
one to  tell  him  what  portions  of  it  are  author- 
itative over  his  life,  and  so  are  revelations  of 
God. 

It  is  said  that  a  woman  once  told  Mr. 
Moody  that  she  was  troubled  with  doubts  as 


» The  Christ  of  To-day,  p.  161. 
» Op.  cit.,  p.  60. 


164  THE  OLD  FAITH 

to  the  Bible  and  asked  him  what  she  should 
do.  And  that  wise  prophet  of  practical  reli- 
gion told  her  to  read  her  Bible  till  she  came 
to  a  command  to  her  in  it,  and  then  not  to 
read  any  more  until  she  had  obeyed  that  com- 
mand. And  then  to  read  further  till  she 
found  another  commandment,  and  to  stop 
again  till  she  had  fulfilled  that.  The  sequel 
of  the  story  is  of  the  amazing  revelations  of 
God  which  came  to  her  as  she  read,  and  the 
satisfying  experience  which  descended  on 
her  as  she  fulfilled  the  Word.  One  cannot 
recommend  this  uncompromising  formula 
without  qualification,  for  it  is  quite  conceiv- 
able that  so  hard-and-fast  a  literalness  would 
land  one  in  dubious  straits;  but  it  is  truly 
that  spirit  which  commends  itself  to  the 
modern  mind  and  life  as  it  was  the  effective 
principle  in  the  mind  of  Jesus.  "He  saith 
unto  them,  Come,  and  ye  shall  see.  And 
they  went,  and  found  as  he  had  said  unto 
them."  That  is  the  unchanging  law  for  the 
discovery  of  spiritual  truth.  "If  any  man 
willeth  to  do  his  will,  he  shall  know  of  the 
teaching,  whether  it  is  of  God."  It  is  in  that 
way  alone  that  one  has  right  to  test  the  Bible 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  165 

or  to  investigate  the  life  flowing  from  the 
Bible.  For  if,  when  one  has  met  the  condi- 
tions demanded  by  the  Bible,  nothing  of  the 
result  it  promises  to  those  conditions  comes 
to  pass,  then  we  may  disbelieve  it  wholly — 
though  its  scientific  utterances  and  historic 
statements  be  proven  absolutely  correct.  But 
if,  when  we  have  fulfilled  the  primary  condi- 
tions of  belief  and  obedience,  those  grave  and 
happy  experiences  come  to  pass  within  our 
lives;  if  we  repent  heartily  for  our  sins,  and 
rest  wholly  on  the  life  and  mystery  of  the 
death  of  Christ,  and  under  the  impulse  of  the 
new  motives  supplied  by  that  new  belief  and 
repentance  we  lead  new  and  humble  lives; 
and  if  then  there  follow  peace  such  as  we 
had  not  before,  and  the  sense  of  forgiveness, 
and  a  certain  strength  by  which  even  the 
bitterest  temptations  are  overcome,  then  we 
may  be  sure  that  the  Book  is  true,  and  that 
Christ  is  present  in  the  Spirit,  and  that 
Providence  watches  over  our  lives,  and  that 
somehow  the  mystery  of  salvation  is  an  ac- 
complished fact,  regardless  of  who  wrote  the 
documents,  and  what  date  they  bear,  and 
what  miracles  did  or  did  not  take  place. 


166  THE  OLD  FAITH 

The  question  for  the  moment,  then,  be- 
comes, Do  such  experiences  follow  the  ac- 
ceptance of  and  obedience  to  the  conditions 
which  the  Bible  lays  down?  The  incidents 
quoted  from  the  third  Gospel  are  indicative 
of  the  reply  which  may  be  written  under- 
neath the  innumerable  lives  of  Christian 
men  and  women:  "They  went,  and  found 
even  as  he  had  said."  It  had  been  thought 
to  illustrate  this  with  the  narrative  of  some 
of  the  conversions  of  men,  but  where  would 
we  begin  and  where  would  we  stop?  The 
late  Commander  Alfred  T.  Mahan,  at  the 
time  of  his  death  the  most  noted  authority  on 
American  naval  matters,  bore  witness  to  his 
conversion  in  Boston  by  accepting  the  Scrip- 
tures on  their  own  terms ;  and  John  Ruskin 
has  told  of  the  power  of  the  Bible  over  his 
own  life.  "I  resolved,"  he  wrote  in  a  letter 
to  his  father,  "that  I  would  believe  in  Christ 
and  take  him  for  my  Master  in  whatever  I 
did;  that  assuredly  to  disbelieve  the  Bible 
was  quite  as  difficult  as  to  believe  it;  that 
there  were  mysteries  either  way ;  and  that  the 
best  mystery  was  that  which  gave  Christ  for 
a  Master.    And  when  I  had  done  this  .   .   . 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  167 

I  felt  a  peace  and  spirit  in  me  I  had  never 
known  before,  at  least  to  the  same  extent; 
and  everything  has  seemed  to  go  right  with 
me  ever  since,  all  discouragements  and  diffi- 
culties vanishing,  even  in  the  smallest 
things." 

Since  Professor  James's  Varieties  of  Reli- 
gious Experience,  illustrations  of  what  the 
fathers  called  the  power  of  grace  have  once 
more  become  popular;  what  would  have  oc- 
casioned no  purely  intellectual  curiosity  or 
interest  at  the  time  of  the  Evangelical  Re- 
vival or  the  Great  Awakening  of  the  forties, 
and  are  indeed  the  normal  effects  of  the  mul- 
tiplying evangelistic  activities  since  the  days 
of  Moody,  have  recently  been  seized  upon 
as  a  new  field  for  literary  hunting.  Mr. 
Harold  Begbie  has  proved  most  voluminous 
in  his  narratives  of  the  Salvation  Army,  and 
the  Water  Street  Mission  has  its  character- 
istic book.  One  may  therefore  cite  an  in- 
stance recorded  by  the  Rev.  R.  F.  Horton, 
and  cite  it  all  the  more  properly  because  of 
his  own  sane  and  thoroughgoing  sincerity. 

It  is  of  a  man  serving  a  term  of  penal 
servitude    at    Durham,    England,    for    at- 


168  THE  OLD  FAITH 

tempted  murder.  He  had  been  born  and 
raised  a  Roman  Catholic,  but  because  it  was 
supposed  that  Protestants  were  given  some 
shght  privileges  Catholics  in  the  prison  were 
not,  he  had  registered  on  his  imprisonment  as 
a  Protestant,  and  so  found  a  Bible  in  his  cell. 
Having  nothing  else  to  do,  he  read  it  to  pass 
away  the  time.  But  one  day,  reading  the 
New  Testament,  he  grew  strangely  inter- 
ested and  the  conviction  came  to  him,  as  he 
has  testified,  that  if  this  book  were  true,  the 
priest  was  not,  and  he  could  pray  to  God  for 
himself.  Under  the  compulsion  of  the  Book 
he  prayed  for  forgiveness,  and  the  response 
came.  He  vowed  that  when  he  should  be 
free  he  would  go  back  to  the  village  where 
he  had  committed  his  crime  and  show  that  he 
was  changed.  He  did  so,  watched  with  sus- 
picion by  the  police  and  the  neighborhood 
until  suspicion  gave  way  to  confidence.  He 
began  to  speak  as  a  local  Methodist 
preacher,  and  at  the  time  Dr.  Horton  re- 
corded the  incident  he  was  a  missionary  in 
India,  known  and  loved  and  honored  and 
abundantly    successful.^      Any   evangehcal 

» Horton:  My  Belief,  p.  120. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  169 

pastor  can  cite  similar  instances,  and  the 
records  of  the  noble  company  of  the  evan- 
gelists are  replete  with  authenticated  ac- 
counts of  personal  transformations  as  note- 
worthy ;  and  not  from  what  we  call  the  lower 
orders  only,  but  from  the  most  cultured  areas 
of  society.  "And  this  surely  is  the  true  mir- 
acle of  the  Bible :  that  a  book  slowly  put  to- 
gether in  a  way  that  we  are  now  coming  to 
understand,  bearing  in  it  the  traces  of  its 
human  origin  and  growth,  should  yet  have 
such  power  to  bring  God  to  men,  to  bring 
men  to  God." ' 

A  book  which  works  in  that  way  when 
accepted  on  its  own  terms  must  be  true,  re- 
gardless of  the  verbal  and  historical  inac- 
curacies which  minute  and  painstaking 
scholarship  finds  in  it.  Its  truth  must  be  far 
more  vital  and  divine  than  that  dependent 
on  mechanical  conceptions  of  inspiration  and 
literal  acceptance  of  all  narratives,  however 
improbable,  with  no  discrimination  as  to 
source.  And  a  book  which,  in  its  own  sphere, 
works  such  permanent  and  tremendous  ac- 
tivities in  human  life  and  character  must  be 

1  Jackson:  The  Preacher  and  the  Modern  Mind,  p.  119f. 


170  THE  OLD  FAITH 

tested  neither  in  the  cloistered  coldness  of  a 
scholar's  study  nor  by  the  flippant  challenges 
of  half -ripe  minds,  nor  by  unyielding  pre- 
conceptions as  to  what  authority  and  inspira- 
tion and  the  faith  of  the  fathers  mean,  but  in 
the  sphere  of  its  distinctive  activities  and 
power. 

I  have  a  life  in  Christ  to  live. 

But  ere  I  live  it  must  I  wait 
Till  learning  can  clear  answer  give 

Of  this  and  that  book's  date? 


Nay,  rather,  while  the  sea  of  doubt 
Is  raging  wildly  round  about. 
Questioning  of  life  and  death  and  sin, 
Let  me  but  creep  within 
Thy  fold,  O  Christ,  and  at  thy  feet 
Take  but  the  lowest  seat. 


V 

CONCERNING  THE  CHURCH 


And  when  the  living  creatures  went,  the  wheels 
went  beside  them;  and  when  the  living  creatures 
were  lifted  up  from  the  earth,  the  wheels  were 
lifted  up.  Whithersoever  the  spirit  was  to  go, 
they  went;  thither  was  the  spirit  to  go:  and  the 
wheels  were  Ufted  up  beside  them;  for  the  spirit 
of  the  living  creature  was  in  the  wheels.  When 
those  went,  these  went;  and  when  those  stood, 
these  stood;  and  when  those  were  lifted  up  from 
the  earth,  the  wheels  were  lifted  up  beside  them: 
for  the  spirit  of  the  living  creature  was  in  the 
wheels.— Ezekiel  1.  19-21. 


CHAPTER  V 

CONCERNING  THE  CHURCH 

The  new  day  and  the  faith  developing  in 
it,  the  new  reading  of  the  Bible  and  the 
newer  conceptions  of  life  evolving  from  and 
through  them  all,  not  only  imply  but  make 
imperative  a  changed  and  changing  theory 
and  conduct  of  the  Church.  At  this  late  day 
to  say  even  that  much  is  to  render  oneself 
liable  to  the  charge  of  antiquity ;  for  the  gen- 
eration out  of  which  we  are  just  passing  has 
probably  been  as  industrious  in  its  attacks 
on  the  Church  as  in  any  other  form  of  intel- 
lectual activity.  Criticism  of  the  Church 
has  been  the  sport  of  kings  and  the  pastime 
of  the  honest  poor.  It  has  furnished  maga- 
zines with  copy  and  pulpiteers  with  popu- 
larity ;  it  has  been  a  fount  of  eloquence  to  the 
self-appointed  apostles  of  the  oppressed, 
and  a  ready-to-hand  excuse  for  the  morally 
indolent  or  brazenty  evil.  The  indictment  of 
the  Church  at  the  bar  of  public  opinion  by 

173 


174  THE  OLD  FAITH 

the  vociferous  voices  of  present-day  criticism 
has  lacked  neither  definiteness  of  charge  nor 
number  of  counts.  The  Church,  so  runs  the 
accusation,  is  active  in  immaterial  things,  in 
dogmas  and  forms  and  bloodless  meditations 
on  remote  themes.  It  exercises  perhaps 
some  oblique  influence  on  minor  segments  of 
life,  an  influence  which  is  negligible  in  the 
great  and  pressing  currents  which  make  up 
our  human  society  and  problem.  The 
Church  is  moving,  but  it  is  in  the  bypaths  of 
the  world's  business;  along  half- forsaken 
walks  of  emotional  and  perhaps  aesthetic  in- 
terest; along  narrow  and  inadequate  roads 
of  obsolete  charities;  or  even  in  its  most 
splendid  and  aggressive  enterprise,  the  mis- 
sionary propaganda,  which  has  at  once  the 
glamour  of  a  crusade  and  the  fascination 
of  a  business  and  professional  challenge,  it 
is  hardly  more  than  at  the  edge  of  the  great 
national  and  social  movements  which  are  so 
stirring  the  peoples  of  the  world.  All 
around  the  Church  to-day  is  the  noise  of  the 
new  warfares  of  humanity,  the  battle  of 
brotherhood  in  industry,  the  passion  of 
social  readjustment,  the  insistent  campaigns 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  175 

against  diseases  which  arise  from  social 
neghgence,  the  commanding  adventures  in 
pohtical  reform,  the  dehcate  yet  intrepid 
movements  for  the  reorganization  of  a  judi- 
cial system  which  has  crushed  its  heart  in  the 
case-hardening  of  its  forms — all  the  mani- 
fold and  compelling  interests  that  are  inter- 
woven in  our  changing  social  life.  All  these 
are  calling  men  and  women  to  chivalrous 
activity  on  behalf  of  their  disadvantaged 
brethren;  the  whole  area  of  human  life  is 
swept  with  the  strong  winds  of  moral  imper- 
ative and  ideal;  but  the  Church  is  lingering 
on  the  edge  of  reality,  singing  of  remote  and 
impractical  experiences.  These  are  some  of 
the  charges  which  the  most  honest,  and  some- 
times the  kindest,  of  the  Church's  critics 
bring  against  it. 

And  this  criticism  of  the  Church,  while 
generally  exaggerated  and  often  irrelevant, 
and  not  infrequently  ludicrous,  has  had 
nevertheless  a  very  real  cause.  One  of  the 
few  temperate  and  sensible  remarks  discov- 
erable in  Mr.  E.  F.  Blanchard's  passing 
volume  on  The  Readjusted  Church,  puts  the 
case  against  the  Church  almost  accurately. 


176  THE  OLD  FAITH 

"The  present  defects/'  he  writes,  "are 
threefold — the  one-sided  conception  of  the 
meaning  of  rehgion ;  the  out-of-date  methods 
which  become  an  open  door  to  corruption 
and  evil,  and  the  nonprogressive  character 
of  the  Church  whereby  she  fails  to  fulfill  her 
whole  mission  in  the  present-day  advance- 
ment of  society."  ^  The  corruption  and  evil 
which  the  author  claims  to  find  from  the 
methods  of  the  Church  are  more  imag- 
inary than  real,  and,  at  the  worst,  neg- 
ative rather  than  positive;  and  it  would  be 
quite  difficult  to  find  any  satisfactory  una- 
nimity as  to  what  methods  will  fulfill  "her 
whole  mission  in  the  present-day  advance- 
ment of  society."  But  the  criticism  is  at 
heart  sound,  and  out  of  the  stream  of  criti- 
cism, honest  and  searching  and  reverent,  as 
well  as  blatant  and  foolish  and  hostile,  which 
has  been  poured  upon  it  for  the  past  genera- 
tion, slowly  at  first  but  now  with  accelerated 
motion,  a  new  form  and  method  of  church 
life  are  shaping  in  and  pressing  on  the 
changing  social  life  and  religious  convic- 
tions of  the  world.    What  the  characteristic 

•  Op.  cit.,  p.  15f. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  177 

form,  what  the  dominant  method  shall  be; 
whether  there  shall  come  to  pass  any  one 
form  or  method  so  preeminent  as  to  give 
name  and  direction  to  the  whole  Church,  the 
present  writer  does  not  make  bold  to  say. 
The  purpose  of  this  chapter  is  far  more 
modest;  it  is  to  suggest  simply  some  con- 
siderations which,  whatever  may  be  the 
forms  and  methods  the  new  age  shall  de- 
velop and  employ,  are  involved  in  its  very 
hfe. 

The  fragment  of  Scripture  presented  at 
the  beginning  of  this  chapter  will  serve  as 
a  fitting  introduction  to  or  illumination  of 
the  pages  to  follow:  "And  when  the  living 
creatures  went,  the  wheels  went  beside  them ; 
and  when  the  living  creatures  were  lifted  up 
from  the  earth,  the  wheels  were  lifted  up. 
.  .  .  When  those  went,  these  went,  and 
when  those  stood,  these  stood;  and  when 
those  were  lifted  up  from  the  earth,  the 
wheels  were  lifted  up  beside  them:  for  the 
spirit  of  the  living  creatures  was  in  the 
wheels."  It  is  a  passage  singularly  germane 
to  much  of  the  present-day  thought  concern- 
ing the  Church,  and  especially  the  Church 


178  THE  OLD  FAITH 

that  is  soon  to  be.  It  reflects  in  terminology 
the  spirit  of  our  characteristic  thinking,  and 
implies  very  largely  the  fundamental  and 
vital  truth  so  commonly  overlooked  and 
without  which  much  of  the  modern  Church 
program  is  patently  inadequate. 

Ours  is  a  wheel  age.  We  speak  and  think 
and  act  largely  in  terms  of  machinery.  The 
human  spirit  which,  a  few  decades  ago, 
found  its  supreme  expression  in  literature 
and  art  and  music,  now  signalizes  its  pres- 
ence and  delineates  its  activity  in  the  inven- 
tion and  use  of  multiplying  and  stupendous 
machinery.  Goethe,  to  go  further  back,  has 
given  way  to  Krupp.  Cardusi  has  been  el- 
bowed out  of  the  way  by  Marconi;  Haw- 
thorne, and  Lowell,  and  Emerson  and  their 
immortal  fellows  have  been  crowded  out  of 
sight  by  Edison,  and  Westinghouse,  and  the 
Wrights.  For  the  quieter  recreations  of  the 
mind  which  gave  to  yesterday  its  thought- 
fulness,  we  deafen  thought  amid  the  in- 
numerable tumult  of  the  motor  car.  That 
immortal  scene  in  Helen's  Babies  where 
Toddy  desires  to  see  the  wheels  go  round 
is  the  unintentioned  picture  and  personifica- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  179 

tion  of  our  present  day.  Our  language  is 
drenched  with  the  atmosphere  of  the  factory ; 
it  smacks  of  the  machine  shop. 

This  intrusion  of  machinery  into  thought 
and  hfe  is  not  surprising  nor  to  be  hastily 
condemned.  It  is  not  now  a  matter  for 
criticism  but  simply  for  recognition;  the 
more  easily  and  imperatively  because  it  has 
affected  other  realms  than  those  of  current 
speech  and  common  industry,  influencing  as 
well  our  conceptions  of  and  attitude  toward 
government.  We  have  come  to  live  and  act, 
as  every  one  knows,  as  if  any  evil  in  society 
large  or  small,  could  be  rectified  automat- 
ically by  the  machinery  of  easily  enacted 
law.  In  the  California  Legislature  of  1912, 
for  instance,  according  to  the  public  press, 
there  were  introduced  four  thousand  bills 
seeking  to  regulate  all  sorts  of  matters,  some 
of  them  as  personal  as  the  size  of  one's 
chicken  coop  and  the  shape  of  one's  clothes. 
This  obsession  of  the  mechanical  idea  mod- 
ifies our  social  activities.  We  seek  to  meet 
conditions  which  call  for  improvement  or 
obliteration  by  the  appointment  of  a  com- 
mittee   and   conduct   ourselves    not    infre- 


180  THE  OLD  FAITH 

quently  as  if  the  universe  were  to  be  regu- 
lated by  statute.  The  first  step  and  too  fre- 
quently the  last  in  many  a  worthy  social 
movement  is  the  calling  of  a  convention,  and 
few  objects  of  observation  are  more  interest- 
ing than  the  commendable  misuses  to  which 
mass-meetings  are  put. 

Our  age  insists  upon  wheels;  and  so  far, 
so  good.  But  it  imagines  them  to  be  inher- 
ently automatic,  and  there  is  no  truly  auto- 
matic machinery  of  law  or  government  or 
industry.  Machinery,  whether  it  be  a  mate- 
rial creation  to  produce  some  physical  com- 
modity, or  a  system  of  legislation,  or  an  or- 
ganization of  society,  is  only  a  tool.  By 
itself  it  is  a  dead  weight.  There  must  be 
beside  it  and  in  it  the  living  creature;  and 
there  is  no  efficiency  or  service  in  a  machine 
of  any  kind  whatsoever  except  as,  in  the 
words  of  this  prophet  quoted  above,  the 
spirit  of  the  living  creature  is  in  the  wheels. 

Here  is  the  well-nigh  fatal  weakness  in 
the  larger  part  of  the  modern  criticism  of  the 
Church;  it  is  concerned,  even  when  it  most 
seems  to  emphasize  the  spirit,  with  the  con- 
duct of  the  wheels;  and  it  offers  its  rebuke 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  181 

and  presents  its  advice  in  the  manner  of  the 
innocent  or  aggrieved  bystander,  with  the 
air  of  one  who  gazes  from  the  pavement  at 
some  spectacle  which  interests  and  provokes 
him,  but  for  which  he  has  not  the  sHght- 
est  responsibihty.  What,  however,  is  the 
Church,  and  of  what  and  whom  is  it  made? 
The  answer  is  that  we  are  the  Church;  it  is 
made  of  us:  not  simply  of  those  who  are 
recognized  as  the  formal  and  recorded  mem- 
bers of  the  organization,  but  of  all  of  us 
whose  lives  are  shaped  by  its  inevitable,  if 
unacknowledged  influences,  and  who  react 
upon  it  in  the  unescapable  relationships  and 
conduct  of  our  experience.  It  is  a  far 
broader  and  more  embracing  fact  than  the 
visible  and  delimited  institution  we  call  by 
the  name.  "The  history  of  our  Western 
civilization  was  largely  but  the  life  history  of 
a  particular  form  of  religion  and  of  wide- 
extending  and  deep-seated  social  movements 
connected  therewith."  ^  This  implies  inevi- 
tably a  very  real  reaction  of  the  social  move- 
ments upon  the  form  of  religion  which  was 
thus  connected  with  them;  and  it  is  at  least 

1  Kidd:  Social  Evolution,  p.  91f. 


182  THE  OLD  FAITH 

questionable  as  to  whether  the  form  of  reli- 
gion has  more  affected  the  social  drift  which 
is  expressed  in  our  changing  civilization,  or 
the  social  drift  more  affected  the  form  of 
religion.  There  has  been  always  a  very  vital 
reciprocal  influence.  Government  illus- 
trates the  same  truth.  Americans  have  been 
born  with  an  infatuation  for  democracy,  and 
there  is  probably  no  intolerance  like  that 
which  conventionally  prevails  in  this  country 
against  the  idea  of  monarchy.  But  there  is 
nothing  inherent  in  the  one  which  guaran- 
tees its  right  to  exist,  and  nothing  inherent 
in  the  other  to  warrant  its  decease.  It  is 
worth  asking,  indeed,  whether,  if  instead  of 
the  three  Georges  there  had  been  a  series  of 
rulers  like  Victoria  or  Edward  VII  on  the 
British  throne,  we  would  not  still  be  colonies 
of  the  motherland.  There  were  not  lacking  a 
few  far-sighted  English  statesmen  who  per- 
ceived a  better  way,  from  the  British  view- 
point, than  the  course  of  enactments  which 
drew  to  the  Revolutionary  War.  To  see 
democracy  trying  to  stand  on  its  own  right 
of  existence  one  needs  to  look  at  some  of  the 
republics  of  South  America  or  at  Mexico 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  183 

since  the  exposure  and  abdication  of  Diaz; 
the  former  are  dictatorships  in  everything 
but  name,  and  at  the  time  these  hues  are 
being  written  the  latter  is  a 

Confused  alarm  of  struggle  and  flight, 
Where  ignorant  armies  clash  by  night, 

out  of  the  seething  currents  of  which  no  man 
is  wise  enough  to  prophesy  what  figure  will 
at  last  take  shape.  The  strength  of  democ- 
racy is  in  the  spirit  of  the  democrats  who 
compose  it;  the  weakness  of  monarchy  has 
always  been  the  defective  and  distorted  char- 
acters of  the  monarchs  by  whom  it  has  been 
administered. 

The  fancy  of  the  Church  as  a  sublime 
and  changeless  institution,  having  a  certain 
real  though  ghostly  and  invisible  form  and 
a  vast  and  mysterious  life  drawn  from  the 
immemorial  past  and  indifferent  to  the  vary- 
ing and  multitudinous  life  of  the  passing 
age — that  fancy  has  long  since  passed  away 
save  from  the  most  mediaeval  minds.  The 
Church  draws  its  divine  life  from  Christ,  its 
divine  and  living  Head,  but  in  its  forms  and 
service  and  doctrine  and  characteristic  ex- 


184  THE  OLD  FAITH 

pression  it  is  the  creation  and  the  creature 
of  every  generation.  In  an  age  when 
tyranny  was  the  principle  of  government, 
and  the  obsession  of  the  divine  right  of  kings 
lay  unrelieved  upon  the  hearts  of  men,  then 
God  and  the  spiritual  world  were  inter- 
preted after  the  same  fashion,  and  there  was 
the  temporal  lordship  of  the  popes,  or  the 
Inquisition  and  the  crime  of  heresy,  or  the 
immutable  decrees.  In  an  age  when  mon- 
archy had  broken  down  of  its  own  incompe- 
tence, or  given  way  by  slower  movement  to 
democracy,  or  had  been  restored  but  bound 
hand  and  foot  with  the  new  limitations  a 
democratic  ideal  had  fastened  on  the  old 
monarchial  figure,  then  independency  of 
some  sort  or  another  sprang  to  life  and 
power,  and  while  their  beleaguered  brethren 
at  home  were  making  nonconformity  to  be 
felt,  out  from  them  the  more  pioneering  spir- 
its crossed  the  sea  and  built  those  heroic  and 
heartening  religious  democracies  of  New 
England  Congregationalism.  There  is  no 
changeless  and  abiding  form  of  Church, 
apostohc  or  otherwise.  There  is  the  abiding 
spirit  of  Christ;  and  the  form  of  institution 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  185 

in  which  that  spirit  shall  be  manifest  and 
effective  among  men  is  the  work  of  a  chang- 
ing hmiianity.  Every  age  in  a  very  real 
fashion  makes  its  own  Church  or  modifies 
the  Church  bequeathed  it  by  its  progenitors, 
as  every  age  develops  new  ideals  and  activ- 
ities and  character,  or  remains  a  more  or 
less  approximate  counterpart  of  that  which 
preceded  it.  It  is  profoundly  true,  as  a 
modern  preacher  has  put  it,  that  "The  man 
who  is  in  the  Church  and  mocks  at  it  is  both 
foolish  and  sinful — foolish  because  he  de- 
rides himself;  sinful  because  he  could  make 
it  better  if  he  would  improve  himself."  ^ 
One  can  go  even  farther  and  say  that  the 
man  who  is  outside  the  Church  and  sneers 
at  it  is  both  ignorant  and  cowardly — igno- 
rant because  he  does  not  realize  that  the 
Church  is  just  what  he  permits  it  to  be,  and 
cowardly  because  he  will  not  accept  the 
Church's  living  challenge  to  make  it  what  it 
ought  to  be.  "The  spirit  of  the  living  crea- 
ture was  in  the  wheels.'* 

It  is  here,  then,  that  the  clue  to  the  activ- 
ities of  the  modern  Church  are  to  be  found ; 

IB.  F.  Stockdale:  Sermons,  p.  119f. 


186  THE  OLD  FAITH 

for  the  question  which  every  member  of  the 
Church  ought  honestly  to  ask  from  the  in- 
side, and  every  critic  ought  sincerely  to  ask 
from  the  outside,  is  not,  "What  is  the  Church 
going  to  do?"  but,  rather,  "What  am  I  go- 
ing to  do?"  Doubtless  there  are  too  many 
church  leaders  and  too  many  individual 
church  organizations  still  out  of  touch  with 
the  characteristic  moods  and  movements  of 
the  present  generation,  but  the  Church  as  a 
whole  is  not  to  be  indicted  in  this  thorough- 
going manner.  It  would  be  easy  to  show 
that  the  fires  of  enthusiasm  with  which  all 
the  humanitarian  movements  have  begun 
and  have  been  maintained  were  kindled  at 
the  altars  of  the  Church ;  it  would  be  easy  to 
show,  to  change  the  figure,  that  the  waters 
of  human  kindness  now  rising  toward  the 
flood  in  the  multiplying  agencies  of  con- 
structive and  preventive  as  well  as  remedial 
brotherhood,  have  started  in  the  divine 
stream  that  flows  within  the  Church,  though 
this,  of  course,  is  the  very  point  in  dispute, 
for  the  most  specious  charge  against  the 
Church  is  that  other  agencies  are  csLrrying  on 
the  vital  and  saving  work  of  society:  feder- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  187 

ations  and  associations  and  clubs,  organized 
charities,  boards  of  public  welfare,  labor 
unions,  state  benevolences  and  institutions, 
even  industrial  and  commercial  corporations 
— these,  we  are  told  again  and  again,  are  the 
effective  agencies  in  the  lifting  of  life  to  the 
higher  levels  of  opportunity  and  recompense 
and  experience.  The  Church,  we  are  in- 
formed, has  let  its  task  and  tools  fall  from 
its  idle  and  withered  grasp,  and,  like  Bun- 
yan's  Pope,  "can  now  do  little  more  than  sit 
in  his  cave's  mouth,  grinning  at  pilgrims  as 
they  go  by." 

In  reply  to  this,  two  remarks  are  to  be* 
made.  First,  that  so  far  from  being  true  in 
the  broad  fashion  of  the  modern  indictment, 
the  one  great  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  spir- 
itual power  and  influence  of  the  Church,  as 
not  a  few  men  of  the  most  catholic  and 
modern  spirit  and  interest  have  recognized, 
is  the  high-minded  but  unwarranted  sur- 
render of  the  Church  to  the  ethical  revival 
which  has  so  completely  filled  the  horizons 
of  our  present-day  prophets.  That  there  is 
such  an  ethical  revival  now  in  progress,  that 
it  is  terribly  and  sadly  needed,  and  that  it  is 


188  THE  OLD  FAITH 

the  very  hope  and  salvation  of  society  and  its 
institutions,  few  with  eyes  open  to  the  new 
day  will  deny ;  and  that  the  Church  must  be, 
as  never  before,  in  the  forefront  of  the  activ- 
ities for  the  promotion  of  the  new  spirit  of 
real  democracy  and  brotherhood  and  indus- 
trial justice  and  good  citizenship,  is  an 
axiom  of  common  thought.  But  that  the 
Church  must  do  all  of  this  as  its  first  and 
supreme  business ;  that  its  conduct  of  purely 
social  service — the  most  threadbare  phrase 
in  our  current  speech — is  its  one  great  task; 
that  we  are  to  resolve  our  churches  into 
societies,  clubs,  federations,  conmiunity 
leagues,  self-improvement  organizations, 
and  transform  our  church  life  into  a  whole- 
sale administration  of  preventive  philan- 
thropy and  the  reformation  en  bloc  of  a 
much-bewildered  industrial  order,  after  the 
ideals  of  young  men  who  have  drifted  out  of 
the  pulpit  and  into  the  street  rnd  of  others 
who  have  never  been  interested  or  sym- 
pathetic with  the  Church  at  all,  is  an  ut- 
terly dangerous  as  well  as  foolish  fallacy  of 
much  present-day  agitation.  Wliatever  the 
Church  is  to  do,  it  must  never  abandon  its 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  189 

primary  duty,  not  to  administer  life  as  by  a 
machine,  but  to  leaven  life  by  truth  incar- 
nated in  regenerated  personalities.  The 
Church  must,  indeed,  be  first  in  the  field  in 
any  and  every  opportunity  for  the  promo- 
tion of  good  citizenship,  good  society,  good 
business,  good  amusements;  for  the  promo- 
tion of  anything  and  everything  good  what- 
soever. The  words  which  aroused  a  Roman 
amphitheater  to  enthusiasm  must  blaze  upon 
its  front:  "Nothing  human  is  foreign  to  me" ; 
but  it  must  never  forget,  as  it  has  seemed  of 
late  to  be  forgetting,  that  into  all  these 
broadening  opportunities  for  ministering  to 
society,  it  must  go  with  a  special  and  dis- 
tinctive gospel  dominant  and  unmistakable 
upon  its  lips.  These  new  activities  are,  after 
all,  its  opportunities,  not  its  aim.  It  must 
renovate  the  world  that  is,  but  it  must 
thunder  on  its  renovation  the  terrors  and  the 
splendors  of  the  world  that  is  to  be. 

The  second  remark  to  be  made  at  this 
point  follows  hard  upon  what  has  just  been 
said.  It  is  that  by  as  much  as  the  social 
and  educational  work  of  the  age  is  being 
done  by  individuals  and  institutions  apart 


190  THE  OLD  FAITH 

from  the  Church,  by  so  much  is  there  a  wit- 
ness to  the  enlarging  success  of  the  Church 
itself.  For  the  Church  is  here  as  a  leaven  to 
leaven  society,  not  as  an  authorit}^  to  compel 
it  or  a  machine  to  crush  it  to  a  predetermined 
and  inflexible  form ;  and  when  on  some  higli^ 
mount  of  an  unerring  judgment  the  insti- 
tutions and  individuals  now  doing  the  work 
the  Church  is  charged  with  failing  to  do,  are 
questioned  as  to  the  final  sources  of  their 
inspiration  and  interest  and  sympathy  and 
purpose,  it  will  be  seen  that  from  the  Church 
their  spirit  drew  its  strength  and  at  the  un- 
recognized altars  of  the  Church  their  pur- 
pose and  the  inspiration  for  their  tasks 
were  formed.  It  was  the  Church  whose 
voice  spoke  loudest  for  the  moral  issues 
of  our  war  with  Spain,  as  it  was  the 
Church  which,  half  a  century  before,  had 
sounded  the  clearest  note  concerning  the 
Civil  War.  It  was  the  Church  which  ham- 
mered hardest  at  the  fetters  of  the  slave, 
and  while  a  section  of  it  stood  for  quite  the 
opposite  point  of  view,  it  was  against  the 
judgment  of  Christendom  at  large  and  but 
a  local  illustration  of  the  inextricable  en- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  191 

tanglement  of  the  Church  with  the  society  in 
which  it  stands.  It  is  the  Church  which  has 
hewed  the  wood  and  carried  the  water,  which 
has  marched  and  fought  and  bivouacked 
amid  the  laughter  and  corruption  of  the 
world,  in  the  bitter  warfare  with  strong 
drink.  In  the  new  crisis  of  an  aroused  and 
inadequately  compensated  industrial  order, 
in  the  new  emergency  of  widely  organized 
commercialized  impurity,  in  the  new  di- 
lemma of  cumbersome  and  outworn  forms 
of  government,  it  is  the  Church  which, 
through  a  hundred  voices  of  men  and  insti- 
tutions, is  speaking  the  conflict  and  the  vic- 
tory which  must  be  fought  and  won.  And 
when  one  remembers  how  in  every  great 
movement  of  the  Church  for  a  mighty  moral 
purpose  it  has  been  awakened,  stirred,  and 
at  last  led  by  a  small  but  increasing  number 
of  envisioned  people  until  the  whole  organ- 
ization advanced  level  with  or  ahead  of  the 
pioneering  minority,  it  is  occasion  for  satis- 
faction that  the  Church,  amid  all  the  criti- 
cism poured  upon  it,  is  so  largely  alive  to 
the  modern  spirit  and  purpose  and  ideal  of 
society.     Cardinal  Newman,  in  one  of  his 


192  THE  OLD  FAITH 

Parochial  Sermons,  calls  the  Church  "the 
Home  of  the  Lonely."  It  was  that  in  a  spe- 
cial way  for  him — a  great,  dim-lighted  re- 
treat, where  the  broken  soul  could  hide ;  and 
it  is  that  to-day  in  its  measure  and  modern- 
ness,  because  it  is  still  made  up,  in  part,  of 
the  lonely.  It  is,  however,  vastly  more. 
The  lonely  are  in  it  now,  not  to  nurse  their 
loneliness  amid  the  somber  beauty  of  shad- 
owed aisles  and  flickering  lights  and  the  sob 
and  wail  of  cathedral  organs ;  the  lonely  are 
in  it  now  to  lose  their  loneliness  in  a  large 
and  active  life.  The  Church  to-day,  in  the 
fine  phrase  of  Professor  Peabody,  is  "not  so 
much  an  association  of  saints  as  an  associa- 
tion of  saviors."  ^  What,  then,  are  the 
men  and  women  in  the  Church  and  those  out 
of  it  who  are  earnestly  scrutinizing  its  pro- 
gram and  movements,  going  to  do  with  it  in 
this  pressing  modern  day?  There  are  not  a 
few  of  them,  as  has  already  been  intimated 
in  the  foregoing  pages,  who  would  deny 
Professor  Peabody's  statement.  That,  they 
would  reply,  is  an  ideal;  the  reality  is  far 
otherwise.    It  is  the  preponderance  of  saints 

1  Approach  to  the  Social  Question,  p.  198. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  193 

rather  than  of  saviors  which  di'aws  their 
critical  fire.  The  only  adequate  reply  is  that 
on  which  this  chapter  has  been  insisting, 
namely,  that  the  spirit  of  the  living  creatures 
is  in  the  wheels.  If  the  Church  seems  but 
tardily  awakening  its  membership  to  social 
duty,  how  many  of  them  are  being  earnestly 
and  intelligently  aroused  by  the  critics  within 
and  without  its  gates  ?  If  the  Church  seems 
indifferent  to  the  moral  issues  in  municipal 
government  and  life,  how  seriously  are  its 
critics  interesting  their  comrades  in  those 
moral  issues,  and  tearing  away  the  fetters 
of  tradition  and  hostility  which  so  long  have 
held  the  Church  from  direct  participation  in 
the  practical  affairs  of  society?  If  the 
Church  is  not  sufficiently  enlisting  the  youth 
and  protecting  the  inexperienced  from  the 
perils  and  pitfalls  of  our  present  day's  too 
liberal  social  habits,  how  vigorously  are  those 
who  recognize  its  failure  inviting  and  warn- 
ing the  young  men  and  women  of  the  times 
and  constructing  within  the  Church  a  more 
adequate  security  and  strengthening  a  more 
sufficient  inspiration?  It  will  be  said,  natu- 
rally, that  the  critics  of  the  Church  are  not 


194  THE  OLD  FAITH 

to  be  expected  to  remain  within  what  they 
believe  to  be  a  f  aihng  institution,  though  the 
most  severe  and  valuable  of  them  are  within 
its  membership  and  activity;  but  that  fact 
does  not  alter  the  responsibility.  The  recog- 
nition of  a  fault  implies  an  obligation.  And 
it  would  be  a  quickening  discipline  if  all  of 
those  who  have  refused  to  be  identified  with 
the  Church  and  yet  have  asserted  an  inalien- 
able right  to  criticize  what  they  have  de- 
clined to  help,  should  be  compelled  to  answer 
frankly  the  question  as  to  how  far  they  have 
thrown  their  influence  on  the  side  of  those 
moral  issues  for  which  the  Church  has  con- 
tended and  for  which  they  have  demanded 
its  entire  effort.  How  far,  for  instance,  has 
the  "practical  business  man,"  who  is  quoted 
so  incessantly  in  complaint  of  the  Church's 
inefficiency,  favored  his  own  free  speech 
when  it  might  cost  him  advertising,  or  fought 
a  saloon  when  it  might  affect  his  trade,  or  in- 
sisted on  law  enforcement  when  it  might 
have  involved  unpleasant  publicity?  Some 
such  practical  business  man,  noting  the  in- 
creasing number  of  houses  given  to  vice  in 
a  neighborhood  around  a  certain  Church, 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  195 

asked  one  of  the  women  of  the  membership 
what  the  Church  could  do  to  help  those  girls? 
"When  you  men,"  was  the  immediate  reply, 
"quit  compelling  girls  to  work  for  four 
dollars  a  week,  then  the  Church  can  do  some- 
thing for  them."  His  interest  in  the  girls 
and  the  Church's  relation  to  them  ended  at 
that  point.  If  one  is  to  be  utterly  frank 
about  this  matter  of  the  Church  and  its 
critics,  notwithstanding  the  perfectly  just 
criticism  which  comes  to  it,  the  average  man 
inside  the  Church  and  out  criticizes  it  for  not 
counteracting  the  wrong  he  persists  in  allow- 
ing or  committing;  he  demands  that  it  shall 
be  courageous  where  he  is  cowardly  and  do 
the  unpleasant  work  of  which  he  is  to  reap 
the  benefit  while  escaping  the  embarrass- 
ment of  reform.  The  business  of  the 
Church,  as  one  of  its  sympathetic  but 
searching  critics  has  said,  is  to  "bring 
society  and  God  together."  ^  But  how  can 
it  do  that  unless  society  wants  to  meet  God? 
And  it  may  be  laid  down  as  a  rule  for  the 
judgment  of  all  pious  profession  both  of 
individuals    as    such    and    self-constituted 

» Mathews:  Church  and  the  Changing  Order,  p.  111. 


196  THE  OLD  FAITH 

prophets  claiming  to  voice  the  aspirations  of 
the  age,  that  society  does  not  want  to  meet 
God  until  it  is  willing  to  pay  the  price  of 
the  encounter.  The  misinterpretation  of  the 
doctrine  of  free  salvation  takes  many  forms, 
but  none  more  specious  than  the  current  pre- 
sumption that  the  Church  is  to  renovate  the 
world  and  sanctify  its  immediate  member- 
ship without  any  regard  for  the  attitude 
of  the  world  and  the  cooperation  of  its 
membership.  We  may  well  remember  an 
old  Greek  saying,  "The  gods  sell  us  all  the 
goods  they  give  us."  ^  The  wheels  go,  but 
only  as  the  living  creatures  go.  "Whither- 
soever the  spirit  was  to  go,  they  went." 

The  responsibility  resting  upon  the 
churchmen  of  the  day,  and  upon  those  who 
reject  the  name  but  are  awake  to  the  chang- 
ing conditions  of  society,  is  made  the  heavier 
and  more  ominous  by  the  fact  that  the 
Church  is  going.  To  make  use  of  a  phrase  of 
a  singularly  frivolous  song  of  recent  popu- 
larity, it  may  not  know  where  it  is  going,  but 
it  is  on  the  way.  It  is  true,  in  part  at  least, 
that  the  Church  has  failed  in  the  immediate 

>  Brierly,  Ourselves  and  the  Univerae,  p.  271. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  197 

past  to  enter  upon  the  opportunity  it  had, 
as  the  men  and  women  in  and  out  of  it  failed 
to  meet  the  privilege  and  obligation  their 
new  age  and  new  thought  opened  to  them. 
But  it  needs  no  prophet  to  realize  that  the 
Church  is  moving  now.  It  is  more  domi- 
nant in  the  intellectual  world  than  it  has 
been  in  a  generation.  Of  the  two  leading 
philosophic  writers  of  the  day,  when  all 
qualifications  have  been  made,  one  is  reem- 
phasizing  the  primacy  of  the  spiritual  life — 
the  old  message  of  the  Church  since  the  first 
century — and  the  other  is  making  a  new 
place  for  and  a  new  insistence  on  the  spirit- 
ual interpretation  of  the  universe.  Within 
the  last  five  years  one  of  the  conservative 
British  journals  made  the  statement  that  of 
all  the  books  published  in  England  during 
the  preceding  twelve  months  more  than  fifty 
per  cent  dealt  with  religion  and  the  Church ; 
while  a  recent  analysis  of  the  number  and 
kind  of  books  published  in  the  United  States 
during  the  year  1914  shows  that  the  volumes 
devoted  to  religion  and  theology  number 
1,032,  six  fewer  than  those  of  sociology  and 
economics,  and  only  24  fewer  than  those  of 


198  THE  OLD  FAITH 

fiction,  which  ranks  first  in  total  output  with 
1,056  titles.  The  very  criticism  of  the 
Church  is  indicative  of  the  paramount  place 
it  occupies  in  modern  life  and  thought. 
In  practical  concerns  the  story  is  of  un- 
paralleled advance.  The  missionary  enter- 
prise, for  instance,  is  to-day  more  extensive, 
better  equipped  and  manned,  better  organ- 
ized, and  more  successfully  carried  on, 
showing  more  results  in  the  redemption  of 
individuals  and  the  illumination  of  society 
than  ever  before.  The  two  great  forces  back 
of  thie  unparalleled  events  which  have  trans- 
pired in  China  have  been  the  Christian 
Church  and  the  Western  education  it  has 
brought  and  inspired.  In  our  own  country, 
immediately  after  the  passage  of  the  Webb 
bill  by  the  United  States  Congress,  in  1913, 
a  piece  of  legislation  which  is  universally 
regarded  as  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  the 
traffic  in  alcoholic  drinks,  the  official  publi- 
cation of  the  organized  liquor  interests  said 
editorially  that  the  organization  and  influ- 
ence of  the  Churches  far  surpassed  their 
own  and  made  certain  the  ultimate  destruc- 
tion of  the  liquor  business.     Taken  in  con- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  199 

trast  with  the  jocular  and  contemptuous  pro- 
nouncements of  these  same  interests  less  than 
twenty  years  earlier,  this  is  highly  signifi- 
cant. To  cite  one  more  illustration:  the 
president  of  De  Pauw  University  is  respon- 
sible for  the  statement  that  a  judge  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  North  Carolina  in  a 
public  address  has  declared  "that  it  would  be 
utterly  impossible  for  the  courts,  in  any 
adequate  manner,  to  enforce  the  laws  of  the 
land  but  for  the  influence  of  the  Church."  ^ 
The  real  problem  of  the  Church  to-day  is  not 
concerned  with  its  social  task  or  its  doctrinal 
faith,  but  with  the  awakening  of  its  mem- 
bership within  and  its  critics  without  to  the 
recognition  of  their  own  responsibility.  A 
membership  and  community  awakened  to 
the  social  vision  which  the  leaders  of  the 
Church  already  have,  and  to  the  responsi- 
bility which  the  social  ministry  and  inspira- 
tion the  Church  has  exercised  in  the  past 
lays  upon  them,  will  mean  the  power  of  the 
Church  returned  tenfold  upon  it  for  the 
splendor  of  a  constructive  service  and  an 
imperial  conquest  in  the  things  of  the  spirit. 

1  Grose:  The  Outlook  for  Religion,  p.  113. 


200  THE  OLD  FAITH 

The  primary  requisite  for  such  activity 
on  the  part  of  men  and  women,  as  the  fore- 
going discussion  has  suggested,  must  be  a 
clearer  understanding  of  the  Church's  busi- 
ness in  the  world  than  is  usually  displayed 
by  the  people  who  rush  into  print  and  other 
publicity  with  their  cut-and-dried  plan  of 
what  the  Church  should  be  doing.  The 
Church  ought  to  touch  and  contribute  to  and 
in  its  measure  fashion  every  form  of  human 
experience  and  activity — government,  com- 
merce, industry,  pleasure,  education,  health ; 
and  to  this  we  are  all  agreed.  But  the 
Church  as  it  admits  its  responsibility  thus 
far,  dare"  not  end  its  responsibility  here ;  it 
must  touch  all  these  forms  of  experience  and 
activity,  not  for  the  creation  or  direction  of 
them  for  themselves  alone,  but  as  the  instru- 
ments and  agencies  of  something  quite  be- 
yond them.  It  must  fashion  and  direct  these 
in  the  interest  of  individual  and  social  char- 
acter. The  passionate  reformer  of  the 
Church  from  without  demands  that  it  shall 
effect  all  these  aspects  and  enterprises  of 
life  for  themselves ;  if  anything  further  is  to 
eventuate,  that  is  a  matter  with  which  he 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  201 

is  not  concerned.  He  demands  that  the 
Church  shall  fight  the  battle  of  the  working 
man  for  the  sake  of  securing  to  him  a  larger 
share  in  the  product  of  his  labor,  that  it  shall 
create  or  support  or  direct  the  amusements 
of  men  and  women  of  certain  social  limita- 
tions for  the  sake  of  getting  them  amused; 
that  it  shall  force  its  influence  directly  into 
the  government  of  cities,  states,  and  the 
nation  for  the  sake  of  getting  them  gov- 
erned; anything  more  than  these  immediate 
issues  are  quite  beside  the  way.  But  the 
Church's  business  can  never  be  simply  to  get 
men  well  paid,  and  nothing  else;  the  well- 
paid  man  may  be  all  the  more  a  lustful  man, 
or  a  selfish  or  cruel  or  turbulent  man.  The 
Church's  business  can  never  be  simply  to  get 
men  and  women  amused,  and  no  more.  The 
men  and  women  for  whom  amusements  are 
provided  may  become  thereby  all  the  more 
frivolous  and  superficial  in  thought  and 
materialistic  in  purpose  and  careless  in  the 
affairs  of  home  and  life.  The  business  of 
the  Church  can  never  be  solely  to  get  men 
better  governed  and  nothing  else;  the  well- 
governed  man  may  all  the  more  easily  be- 


202  THE  OLD  FAITH 

come  indifferent  to  other  interests  and  issues 
than  his  own,  a  man  of  satisfied  and  sleek 
and  indolent  mind.  The  business  of  the 
Church  is  to  get  men  and  women  well  paid 
and  responsive  to  the  commensurate  obliga- 
tions of  their  larger  opportunity  and  com- 
fort. It  is  to  get  men  and  women  amused, 
in  order  that  they  may  react  the  more  easily 
and  effectively  to  the  more  serious  concerns 
of  human  life  and  relationship  and  thought. 
It  is  to  get  men  well  governed,  so  that  they 
may  the  more  readily  become  and  remain 
good  citizens,  and  not  only  good  citizens  but 
good  men.  The  supreme  business  of  the 
Church  is  to  make  Christian  character  in 
time  and  for  eternity,  and  it  must  use  all  the 
varied  opportunities  and  interests  of  the  age 
that  now  is  as  avenues  and  agencies  of  that 
one  supreme  business. 

That,  it  is  obvious,  can  never  be  done 
simply  by  social  service  committees  and 
organized  efforts  in  social  and  political  activ- 
ity and  federation.  It  can  be  done  only  as 
men  and  women,  inside  the  Church  and  out, 
avail  themselves  of  the  immeasurable  ad- 
vantage of  the  Church's  history  and  organ- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  203 

ization,  the  authority  of  its  message  and 
meaning  in  the  accumulated  experiences  of 
the  race,  the  inspiration  of  its  Bible,  and  the 
power  of  its  pulpit,  and,  perhaps  more  than 
all  else,  the  personal  impact  of  its  member- 
ship, thus  envisioned  and  inspired,  in  grip- 
ping the  men  and  women  of  the  present  day 
and  its  conditions,  in  those  ways  which  they 
themselves  have  discerned  to  be  the  most  im- 
mediate and  effective. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  inspiration 
to  all  of  this  must  come  from  the  pulpit. 
The  characteristic  demand  of  the  enthusi- 
astic and  active  participants  in  our  genera- 
tion's reform  and  social  movements  is  that 
the  preacher  shall  throw  himself  bodily  into 
the  practical  working  and  organization  of 
those  reforms  and  social  movements;  and  it 
is  past  gainsaying  that  many  a  preacher 
would  be  humanized  in  character  and  illu- 
mined in  utterance  if  he  should  come  into 
close  and  practical  contact  with  the  machin- 
ery and  operatives  of  modern  social  activity. 
But  there  is  a  far  greater,  if  less  spectacular 
work  for  him  to  do.  He  is  not  to  preside  at 
board  meetings  nor  take  his  place  on  the 


204  THE  OLD  FAITH 

front  rank  of  committees ;  but  he  is  to  study 
with  so  keen  and  sympathetic  an  apprecia- 
tion the  conditions  of  his  times  and  place,  to 
coordinate  so  sincerely  the  various  knowl- 
edge and  ideal  of  his  changing  generation, 
to  speak  so  truly  and  with  so  sane  yet  bold 
a  message,  that  the  men  and  women  who 
hear  him  shall  cry  like  the  multitudes  of  old, 
"What  shall  we  do?"  This  seems  an  easy 
program,  but,  on  the  contrary,  it  presents 
the  hardest  and  most  perilous  of  tasks.  The 
rejection  of  the  pulpit  by  the  present  gen- 
eration, to  whatever  extent  that  the  pulpit 
is  rejected,  is  due  to  two  grave  faults.  First 
and  most  common,  of  course,  is  the  pulpit's 
failure  to  appreciate  the  new  age,  not  only 
as  regards  its  social  passion  and  program 
but  as  regards  its  intellectual  life  as  well. 
There  are  still  not  a  few  preachers  whose 
relation  to  current  thought  is  implied  in 
their  eoo  cathedra  utterances  that  evolution 
is  godless  and  that  they  believe  the  whole 
Bible.  To  the  ever  increasing  number  of 
men  and  women  who  accept  in  whole  or  in 
part  the  principles  of  modern  criticism  and 
yet  find  the  Bible  the  exhaustless  source  of 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  205 

their  spiritual  life  and  Christ  their  personal 
Redeemer,  and  who  discern  in  evolution  the 
more  amazing  witness  to  the  majesty  and 
love  of  God,  such  utterances  can  have  but 
one  effect,  and  that  obvious.  But  even  worse 
in  their  repelling  influence  are  the  still  more 
numerous  preachers  whose  public  utterances 
give  no  hint  that  they  have  been  so  much  as 
touched  by  the  day  in  which  they  live ;  whose 
themes,  vocabularies,  illustrations,  intellec- 
tual processes  and  presumptions  are  appar- 
ently as  remote  from  the  present  generation 
as  from  the  first  century. 

On  the  other  hand  are  those  preachers  of 
pure  purpose  and  admirable  enthusiasm  and 
courage,  across  whose  vision  the  wrongs  and 
pathos  of  our  social  order  have  smitten  so 
bitterly  that  they  can  speak  of  nothing  else, 
can  throw  themselves  passionately  into 
nothing  but  immediate  and  manifold  cam- 
paigns for  social  reform;  whose  pulpits  are 
indeed  prophetic,  but  so  monotonous  in  their 
reiteration  of  the  needs  of  the  life  that  is 
that  there  is  no  whisper  in  their  sanctuaries 
of  the  life  that  is  to  be;  whose  emphasis  is 
so  overwhelming  on  the  material  emergencies 


206  THE  OLD  FAITH 

of  society  that  the  spiritual  obhgations,  priv- 
ileges, and  eventualities  are  overlooked. 

In  the  chapter  which  follows  the  subject 
of  the  preaching  for  the  times  will  be  con- 
sidered ;  and  the  business  of  the  preacher  will 
there  be  more  fully  dealt  with.  Here  it  is 
enough  to  indicate  briefly  what  his  duty  is 
as  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  leader  of  the 
major  portion  of  the  community.  For  while 
the  agencies  which  go  to  the  forming  of 
public  opinion  have  greatly  multiplied,  on 
account  of  which  it  is  freely  said  that  the 
preacher  is  no  longer  a  vital  factor  in  the 
intellectual  and  social  life  of  the  age,  if  that 
is  true  it  is  because  he  has  failed  of  the 
opportunity  which  the  age  most  cordially 
offers  him. 

It  is  to  be  emphasized  again  at  this  point, 
and  repeatedly,  that  the  supreme  message  of 
the  pulpit  remains  what  it  always  was — to 
proclaim  the  gospel  of  personal  salvation 
through  the  life  and  death  of  the  Divine 
Lord;  but  that  message  must  be  voiced  in 
modern  language,  must  be  related  to  modern 
knowledge,  and  shown  to  be  socially  oper- 
ative in  the  preventive,  constructive,  and 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  207 

remedial  movements  of  modern  brotherhood. 
With  this  clearly  understood  as  the  funda- 
mental purpose  and  program  of  the  Church, 
the  Church's  business,  through  its  pulpit,  is 
threefold.  It  is,  first,  following  not  an  in- 
evitable but  a  convenient  order,  to  translate 
the  ever  new  readings  of  science  into  the 
language  of  the  spiritual  life,  and  to  inter- 
pret the  substance  of  the  faith  in  terms 
harmonious  with  the  new  knowledge. 
Again,  it  is  to  relate  religion  to  democracy 
in  so  vital  a  fashion  that  spiritual  character 
and  experience,  whatever  other  expressions 
it  may  take,  will  inevitably  find  its  imme- 
diate expression  in  the  practical  forms  of 
good  citizenship  and  in  just  and  honest  com- 
mercial and  industrial  relations.  In  the 
third  place,  and  perhaps  more  important 
even  than  the  former  functions,  if  that  be 
possible,  it  is  to  mediate  between  the  scholar- 
ship of  the  college  and  university  and  the 
personal  spiritual  life,  to  coordinate  the  life 
of  learning  and  of  piety  in  a  scientific  yet 
spiritual  exposition  of  the  Bible,  so  that  the 
wholly  unnecessary  contradiction  between 
the  college  classroom  and  the  Bible  school 


208  THE  OLD  FAITH 

and  sermon  shall  be  ended;  and  the  hosts  of 
young  men  and  women  who  come  from  insti- 
tutions of  higher  education  shall  not  be 
asked  to  stifle  their  intelligence  and  deny 
the  spirit,  facts,  and  instruments  of  modern 
culture  when  they  cross  the  threshold  of  the 
Church, 

With  this  as  the  occupation  of  its  pulpit, 
the  Church  as  an  association  of  saviors  will 
not  long  remain  simply  an  ideal.  It  will  be 
inevitably  and  intensely  real.  The  spirit  of 
knowledge,  the  spirit  of  democracy,  the  spirit 
of  truth — for  these,  and  not  boards  and  com- 
mittees and  platforms,  are  the  character- 
istic instruments  of  the  Church — through 
the  practical  insight  and  labor  of  truly  awak- 
ened and  saved  men  and  women,  will  work 
out  in  large  and  satisfying  measure  the 
Church's  contribution  to  the  justice  and 
health  and  harmony  of  the  now  turbulent 
and  bewildered  social  order.  I  have  not  for- 
gotten the  presence  of  Christ  and  the  Spirit 
in  the  Church;  but  Christ  gets  to  men  only 
as  other  men  reveal  him.  The  Spirit  of  God 
works  in  society  and  life  only  as  he  works 
through  men  who  are  in  society  and  have 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  209 

part  in  life.  We  are  the  tools  of  God;  toil- 
ers on  the  highway  on  which  alone  he  has  to 
travel  to  our  brethren;  channels  through 
which  alone  his  fructifying  grace  can  vivify 
and  ornament  the  vaster  acreage  of  human 
experience  and  enterprise. 

The  chapter  has  been  emphasizing  the 
truth  that  the  character  and  activities  of  the 
Church  depend  upon  the  personal  attitude 
of  the  men  and  women  who  compose  and  re- 
enforce  it;  but  there  is  a  parallel  truth  we 
have  come  utterly  to  ignore  to-day,  namely, 
that  the  life  of  society  and  the  individual  de- 
pends upon  the  Church  as  well.  "The  spirit 
of  the  living  creature  was  in  the  wheels," 
and  "whithersoever  the  spirit  was  to  go,  they 
went";  but  it  is  equally  true  that  the  spirit 
did  not  go  without  the  wheels.  There  is  a 
violent  mood  among  those  who  are  hostile  to 
the  Church;  they  say  that  the  Church  has 
lagged  behind  and  they  will  leave  it  behind. 
We  are  warned  from  many  a  quarter  that 
humanity,  in  its  warfares  of  brotherhood, 
its  passionate  march 

On,  to  the  bound  of  the  waste. 
On,  to  the  City  of  God, 


210  THE  OLD  FAITH 

will  abandon  the  Church  as  an  outworn  and 
useless  thing.  They  make  bold  to  challenge 
the  Church,  "Either  come  with  us,  or  we  go 
on  without  you!"  And  there  are  weeping 
prophets  in  plenty  who  cry  pathetically  over 
the  impending  doom  of  Zion.  The  real 
doom  from  that  brave  and  confident  attitude 
is  not  for  the  Church  but  for  those  who 
abandon  it.  The  Church  goes  with  humanity 
in  its  highest  and  hardest  and  holiest  quests 
and  conquests,  or  humanity  cannot  go.  His- 
tory speaks  plainly  to  the  point  that  not  a 
single  great  moral  enterprise  of  man  since 
Christ  has  been  established  without  the 
Church's  interest  and  adventure ;  not  a  single 
desolating  power  has  come  face  to  face  with 
the  Church  and  the  influences  springing 
from  it  but  has  eventually  gone  down  to 
hopeless  defeat.  Moslem  civilization, 
French  infidehty,  English  deism,  the  institu- 
tion of  slavery — all  have  been  crushed  and 
conquered  beneath  the  wheels  of  a  Church 
actuated  by  that  infilling  spirit,  but  a  spirit 
which,  without  the  Church,  would  have  been 
an  aspiration  and  perhaps  a  passion,  but  an 
indeterminate  and  footless  thing.     In  our 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  211 

impatience  with  the  more  superficial  aspects 
of  the  Church  and  its  forms  we  have  well- 
nigh  forgotten  the  abiding  substance  of  its 
mysterious  life.  Its  form  is  shaped  and 
fashioned  by  every  age  as  suits  that  age's 
spirit  and  discernment;  but,  without  contra- 
dicting what  was  said  earlier  in  the  chapter 
concerning  it  as  an  institution,  its  substance 
is  a  permanent  and  divine  reality  which  de- 
fies the  temper  of  men's  ignorance  and  the 
violence  of  their  hostihty. 

The  Church's  one  foundation 

Is  Jesus  Christ  her  Lord; 
She  is  his  new  creation 

By  water  and  the  word: 
From  heaven  he  came  and  sought  her 

To  be  his  holy  bride; 
With  his  own  blood  he  bought  her 

And  for  her  life  he  died. 

The  mysticism  of  the  language  and  idea  may 
seem,  at  times,  unsuited  for  our  day,  and 
there  may  be  some  to  resent  the  upthrust  of 
this  old  conception  into  our  new  and  sput- 
tering programs  of  tireless  activity.  But 
the  conception  persists,  as  Christ  abides  and 
the  New  Testament  makes  its  ancient  ap- 


212  THE  OLD  FAITH 

peal.  To  think  that  men  will  leave  all  this 
behind  as  a  bit  of  rusted  and  obsolete  ma- 
chinery, to  think  that  men  will  get  away 
from  this  and  live  any  vital  and  permanent 
ethical  and  spiritual  life,  is  to  confess 
oneself  either  hopelessly  ignorant  of  or 
congenitally  blind  to  the  patent  witness  of 
history  and  experience.  When  the  Church 
does  not  save  society  nothing  will ;  when  men 
break  with  the  Church  in  order  to  save  so- 
ciety they  break  themselves,  illustrations  of 
which  are  not  lacking  even  as  the  words  are 
being  written.  Men  and  women,  however 
earnest  and  impassioned,  have  not  the  alter- 
native of  inspiring  and  using  the  Church  or 
working  without  the  Church.  They  have  the 
alternative  of  inspiring  and  using  the  Church 
or  doing  nothing  permanent  and  effective  in 
exalting  the  spiritual  aims  and  activities  of 
society  and  life.  The  spirit  is  in  the  wheels 
or  it  is  nowhere ;  and  if  the  wheels  do  not  go 
whithersoever  the  spirit  is  to  go,  not  even  thq 
spirit  will  go.  But  "when  they  went,  I  heard 
the  noise  .  .  .  like  the  noise  of  great  waters, 
like  the  voice  of  the  Almighty,  a  noise  of 
tumult  like  the  noise  of  a  host." 


VI 
AN  ADEQUATE  EVANGEL 


.  .  .  That  a  man  stand  there  and  speak  of  spir- 
itual things  to  men.  It  is  beautiful; — even  in  its 
great  obscuration  and  decadence,  it  is  among  the 
beautifulest,  most  touching  objects  one  sees  on  the 
Earth.  This  Speaking  Man  has  indeed,  in  these 
times,  wandered  terribly  from  the  point;  has,  alas, 
as  it  were,  totally  lost  sight  of  the  point:  yet,  at 
bottom,  whom  have  we  to  compare  with  him? 
...  I  wish  he  could  find  the  point  again,  this  Speak- 
ing One;  and  stick  to  it  with  tenacity,  with  deadly 
energy;  for  there  is  need  of  him  yet! — Carlyle:  Past 
and  Present,  p.  233f. 


CHAPTER  VI 

AN  ADEQUATE  EVANGEL 

No  man  has  more  advice  given  him  than 
the  preacher.  Like  the  profession  of  author- 
ship, or  the  editing  of  a  paper,  from  some 
points  of  view  the  ministry  seems  to  be  an 
occupation  singularly  free  from  technicality, 
and  preaching  a  matter  of  exceptional  ease. 
From  another  aspect  it  appears  to  be  a  call- 
ing in  which  the  masters  exist  only  in  the 
past,  or  are  now  engaged  in  enterprises  out- 
side of  the  regular  pastorate.  On  either  con- 
ception the  result  is  an  amazing  output  of 
published  counsel  intended  to  make  every 
preacher  a  paragon  of  pulpit  effectiveness 
and  administrative  power.  Any  one,  then, 
who  attempts  even  a  chapter  on  the  subject 
of  preaching  is  under  the  embarrassing  dis- 
advantage of  addressing  men  who  very  likely 
know  more  about  the  subject  than  he  does, 
and  who  have  good  right,  humanly  speak- 
ing, to  resent  the  intrusion  of  more  advice, 
especially  if  it  happens,  as  it  very  often  does, 

215 


216  THE  OLD  FAITH 

that  the  adviser  has  achieved  no  more  suc- 
cess than  they  have.  The  problems  of  the 
pastor  and  the  tasks  of  preaching  are  the 
easiest  of  problems  and  the  simplest  of 
tasks  when  observed  from  the  safe  distance 
of  detached  service.  But  to  the  man  in  the 
heart  of  the  city,  hearing  the  tramp  of  un- 
numbered feet  going  past  his  church  doors 
to  the  gates  of  hell ;  to  the  man  in  the  fashion- 
able community,  feeling  the  sting  of  the  so- 
cial patronizing  and  artificiality  in  the  atti- 
tude of  a  large  proportion  of  his  member- 
ship; to  the  man  in  the  smaller  to^vn  or 
country  charge,  knowing  the  arctic  pressure 
of  indifference  outside  and  inconsistency  in- 
side his  church;  to  all  of  us  who  feel  the 
injustice  of  criticism  sprung  from  the  com- 
mercialized insincerity  and  ignorance  of 
many  present-day  novelists  and  magazine 
seers,  the  problems  and  tasks  have  larger 
proportions.  The  modern  Church  is  pressed 
upon  by  many  and  distracting,  yet  impera- 
tive obligations  of  service.  The  cause  of 
good  government,  of  the  reinterpretation  of 
truth  in  terms  of  modern  science  and  litera- 
ture; the  development  of  the  social  spirit 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  217 

and  the  training  of  the  membership  to  large 
missionary  insight  and  benevolence ;  the  evo- 
lution of  a  modern  Sunday  school; — these 
are  some  of  the  activities  with  which  the 
Church  of  to-day  must  be  concerned.  We 
modern  preachers  are  set  at  the  head  of  so 
much  machinery,  we  have  had  our  organiza- 
tions so  multiplied  that  it  seems  to  take  al- 
most all  our  time  to  lubricate  the  works,  and 
as  William  Adams  Brown  has  tersely  put 
it,  "The  institution  which  should  be  our  serv- 
ant has  become  our  master."  ^  All  of  which 
should  convince  the  most  "modern"  type  of 
preacher  that  his  first  business  is  to  preach. 
The  Church  and  the  world  undoubtedly  need 
administration,  pastoral  oversight,  social 
organization  and  activity,  but  first  of  all  they 
need  preaching.  Everything  depends  on  the 
pulpit.  And  in  an  age  which  emphasizes 
almost  ad  nauseam  the  importance  of  organ- 
ization, the  remark  of  Charles  E.  Jeffer- 
son ought  never  to  be  forgotten,  that  "men 
who  cannot  preach  have  ordinarily  little  to 
organize."  ^ 


» Modern  Theology  and  the  Preaching  of  the  Gospel,  p.  251. 
»  Building  of  the  Church,  p.  278f. 


218  THE  OLD  FAITH 

The  aim  of  preaching,  of  course,  remains 
the  same  from  age  to  age.  It  is  to  win  men 
and  women  to  the  personal  experience  of  and 
allegiance  to  Christ.  It  is  to  be,  in  a  word, 
evangelistic.  "The  Christian  minister,'*  as 
William  Adams  Brown  has  said  in  a  single 
sentence  in  the  volmne  just  quoted,  "exists 
for  the  single  purpose  of  making  real  to  men 
the  purpose  of  God  for  the  salvation  of  the 
world."  ^  This  conception  will  do  away  with 
a  far  too  popular  idea  of  evangelistic  preach- 
ing as  a  "simple  gospel  message,"  in  which 
the  mercy  of  God  will  make  up  in  some 
amazing  manner  for  the  unmerciful  empti- 
ness of  the  preacher.  The  "simple  gospel 
message"  of  which  we  have  heard  so  much 
never  really  existed.  What  has  been  intended 
by  the  phrase  is  usually  a  collection  of  plati- 
tudes in  scriptural  accent  put  together  with- 
out much  labor,  and  amply  illustrated  by 
more  or  less  relevant  anecdotes  of  senti- 
mental nature;  and,  generally,  the  product 
has  been  simple  enough  from  every  point  of 
view.  But  that  is  not  the  gospel.  The 
gospel  is  Christ — the  stupendous  mystery 

iQp.  cit.,  p  252. 


IN  THE  NEW  t)AY  219 

of  God  on  earth,  the  amazing  paradox  of 
God  dying  and  yet  alive,  the  unfathomable 
wonder  of  men  delivered  from  sin  and  seized 
for  immortality ;  and  there  is  nothing  simple 
in  it.  It  took  all  there  is  of  God  to  make  it 
possible,  and  when  you  read  the  story  it  is 
in  terms  of  miracle,  darkness  over  a  cross, 
and  sunlight  streaming  into  a  grave  an  em- 
pire could  not  keep  shut.  Real  evangelism 
recognizes  the  magnitude  of  its  terms,  and 
always  has  a  basis  .in  profound  thought ;  it 
always  springs,  if  it  is  effective  in  any  large 
and  permanent  way,  from  a  deep  back- 
ground of  thoughtful,  not  "simple"  preach- 
ing, though,  of  course,  simplicity  of  expres- 
sion is  the  very  goal  of  profound  thought. 

It  is  quite  obvious,  of  course,  that  there 
cannot  be  too  great  emphasis  upon  this  busi- 
ness of  evangelism  as  we  have  come  to  think 
of  it,  apart,  of  course,  from  any  question  of 
ways  and  means.  The  living  Church  is  a 
Church  to  which  are  added  continually  those 
who  are  being  saved ;  and  the  epochs  of  reli- 
gious power  have  been  epochs  of  practical 
and  successful  evangelism.  The  evangelism 
of    to-day,    however,    notwithstanding    the 


220  THE  OLD  FAITH 

marvelous  numerical  successes  reported  of 
special  campaigns,  and  the  repeated  seasons 
of  protracted  efforts  in  individual  churches, 
has  not  been  sufficient  as  yet  to  redeem  the 
Church  from  the  charge  of  indolence  nor 
turn  the  tide  of  what,  particularly  in  the 
cities,  is  keenly  felt  to  be  its  failing  influence. 
These  special  campaigns  have  wrought  large 
results  in  their  immediate  localities,  and  have 
contributed  not  a  little  to  the  rapidly  in- 
creasing power  'of  the  prohibition  move- 
ment; but  they  have  not  communicated  their 
impetus  and  spirit  from  place  to  place  until 
a  characteristic  wave  of  spiritual  interest  and 
intensity  has  swept  the  country.  This  re- 
mark takes  into  account  the  notable  conta- 
gion and  success  of  the  Gospel  Team  Move- 
ment, originating  in  Wichita,  Kansas,  a 
movement,  however,  which  up  to  the  present 
is  restricted  to  comparatively  small  area; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  practical  failure 
of  the  Men  and  Religion  Forward  Move- 
ment is  also  remembered.  No  one  can  say 
that  the  men  who  have  led  and  are  leading 
these  campaigns  with  their  varying  successes 
are  not  as  consecrated  as  their  predecessors 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  221 

were,  and  the  aim  and  motif  of  their  preach- 
ing has  always  the  same  fundamental  appeal, 
shaped  more  or  less  to  seize  the  characteristic 
temper  of  the  age;  but  the  evangelism  of 
the  pastor  in  his  intermittent  "meetings"  and 
that  of  the  professional  evangelists  in  their 
mammoth  "campaigns"  alike  too  largely 
fail  of  the  large  and  constructive  results  of 
the  great  revival  movements  of  the  past. 

The  Lutheran  revival  followed  the  proc- 
lamation that  the  just  shall  live  by  faith; 
the  Wesleyan  movement  sprang  from  the 
quickening  gospel  of  the  witness  of  the 
Spirit;  the  awakening  under  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards was  wrought  by  his  and  his  col- 
leagues' terrible  preaching  of  New  Eng- 
land's awful  God,  a  deliverance  which  rolled 
back  the  rising  tides  of  American  infidelity; 
followed  then  the  great  revival  led  by  Finney 
proclaiming  the  wrath  of  God;  and,  after  a 
generation,  the  work  of  Moody  with  his  mes- 
sages of  God's  infinite  love.  Here  is  the  dif- 
ference: the  evangelism  of  to-day  lacks  the 
single  and  commanding  message;  it  deals 
with  pieces  of  truth  instead  of  a  whole 
mastering  truth ;  it  incites  men  to  moral  ac- 


222  THE  OLD  FAITH 

tions  instead  of  overwhelming  them  with  the 
inexorable  spiritual  order.  The  reasons  for 
this  may  be  several,  but  one  of  them,  at  least, 
is  that  we  have  not  clearly  apprehended  the 
social  nature  of  the  antireligious  spirit;  we 
have  not  recognized,  as  our  fathers  did,  that 
the  spirit  hostile  to  religion  and  the  Church 
is  a  matter  of  the  whole  of  society  as  well  as 
an  individual  attitude.  Wesley  faced  the 
sordidness  and  brutality  of  English  society 
as  a  whole,  as  historians  of  the  day  present 
it;  Edwards  confronted  the  unbelief  engen- 
dered by  the  influence  of  Thomas  Paine  and 
his  fellows;  Moody  smote  on  the  calloused 
conscience  of  a  whole  generation  that  had 
learned  to  harden  itself  against  the  orthodox 
f  ulminations  of  hell  and  eternal  punishment. 
But  the  evangelism  of  our  day  has  not  felt 
the  social  nature  of  the  antireligious  spirit. 
It  has  no  message  for  a  generation  but  only 
for  a  neighborhood,  and  the  results  are 
neighborhood  results.  There  is  practically 
no  body  of  doctrine  in  the  preaching  of  the 
present-day  evangelists.  They  deal  largely 
with  homilies,  exhortations,  ethical  precepts, 
illustrations  of  past  conversions,  and  tales 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  223 

that  draw  tears;  they  accomphsh  an  im- 
measurable good  in  the  quickened  hves  of 
already  Christian  people  and  the  conversion 
of  men  and  women  who  are  within  easy  reach 
of  the  immediate  and  special  services.  But 
they  do  not  spring  from  nor  create  a  perma- 
nent body  of  social  seriousness  and  do  not 
inspire  a  social  earnestness  in  the  things  of 
God. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  this  is  not  a 
criticism  of  the  evangelist  or  the  evangel- 
istic campaign.  Their  task  is  not  con- 
structive but  inaugural.  They  are  not  to 
edify  the  Church  or  direct  the  community 
beyond  the  Church;  they  are  to  arouse  the 
indifferent  and  subdue  the  hostile  to  the 
things  of  the  spirit.  Back  of  them,  back  of 
their  evangelism  of  the  occasion,  there  must 
be  a  fundamental  and  consistent  body  of 
Christian  preaching,  a  coordinated  and  time- 
less, yet  progressive  Christian  message  of 
which  the  evangelism  of  the  occasion  shall 
be  the  concrete  and  smiting  application.  It 
is  this  body  of  coordinated  and  consistent 
preaching  which  is  meant  by  an  adequate 
evangel,  and  of  this  the  chapter  will  attempt 


224  THE  OLD  FAITH 

an  exposition.  It  is  to  be  said  at  once  that 
the  shaping  of  this  vaster  message  and,  with 
it,  the  creation  of  a  social  seriousness  and 
interest  in  the  things  of  God,  are  the  business 
of  the  stationed  preachers.  They  can  feel, 
as  no  itinerant  evangehst,  or  contemplative 
student,  or  distracted  church  official,  the 
very  pulse  of  everyday  thought  and  life; 
and  they  can  preach,  week  after  week  and 
month  after  month,  an  accumulating  and 
constructive  gospel,  as  no  man  with  stated 
messages  or  unimpassioned  books  can  ever 
hope  to  do. 

This  adequate  evangel  which  is  our  hope 
to-day  will  be,  then,  a  body  of  consistent 
preaching  creating  a  social  earnestness  in 
spiritual  things.  It  will  be  drawn  from  and 
react  in  an  individual  experience  of  awaken- 
ing and  penitence  and  aspiration  and  conse- 
cration to  personal  religious  life.  What  will 
be  the  features  of  such  preaching? 

First  of  all,  there  will  be  in  it  the  note  of 
authority.  The  word  strikes  strangely  on 
our  vmaccustomed  ears,  for  it  is  a  bad  time 
nowadays  for  authority  in  religion.  It  is 
getting  to   be   a   bad   time   for   authority 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  225 

anywhere.  It  has  gone  from  the  home, 
and  our  cities  are  passing  ordinances  to 
regulate  the  conduct  of  young  men  and 
women  after  dark  instead  of  bringing  them 
up  to  a  decent  sense  of  self-respect.  It  has 
gone  from  the  courts ;  they  can  coerce  us  but 
they  cannot  command  our  reverence.  Long 
ago  it  went  away  from  the  Church.  The 
legend  on  the  banner  carried  in  the  Law- 
rence strike  of  1912  and  a  year  later  in  the 
Seattle  riots,  as  well  as  elsewhere,  was  a 
crystallization  of  one  of  the  moods  of  the 
age:  "No  God  and  no  Master."  But  for  all 
of  that,  there  is  an  intrinsic  authority  in  the 
Christian  message,  and  that  authority  must 
speak  again.  No  one  took  away  the  author- 
ity of  the  Church  and  the  gospel;  it  was 
thrown  away  by  the  leaders  of  the  Church 
and  the  spokesmen  of  the  gospel.  The 
writer  is  quite  aware  that  we  have  innumer- 
able sages  and  infallible  men  who  tell  us  that 
the  pulpit  lost  its  commanding  position  be- 
cause it  was  too  doctrinal,  because  it  dwelt 
too  much  on  matters  of  mere  belief  rather 
than  interesting  itself  in  the  immediate 
emergencies  of  conduct  and  life.    But  there 


226  THE  OLD  FAITH 

has  been  no  more  thoroughgoing  and  fruit- 
ful fallacy  proclaimed  against  or  accepted 
by  the  preacher  than  this.  The  pulpit  lost 
its  authority  when  it  ceased  to  speak  author- 
itatively on  the  things  in  which  it  is  supreme. 
The  pulpit  can  be  authority  in  only  one 
realm — in  the  proclamation  of  fundamental 
moral  and  religious  fact,  in  the  announce- 
ment of  the  commanding  and  abiding  obliga- 
tions of  the  spiritual  mind  and  life,  in  a 
world  where  other  obligations  change  with 
the  changing  years.  The  average  pulpit 
speaks  to-day  of  social  service;  and  trained 
welfare  workers  and  philanthropic  experts 
regard  it  rightly  as  an  amateur.  It  speaks 
of  industrial  ideals  and  activities;  and  the 
leaders  of  organized  labor  and  the  masters 
of  corporate  wealth  regard  it  as  an  intruder. 
It  speaks  of  those  generous  and  pervading 
cultures  of  life  to  refined  experience  and 
character;  and  the  professional  teacher 
smiles  with  tolerant  amusement  from  his 
chair  of  specialized  knowledge.  It  plunges 
with  reforming  zeal  into  the  windy  arena  of 
practical  politics  bent  upon  some  service  to 
the  city  or  humanity  at  large;  and  expe- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  227 

rienced  legislators  and  trained  politicians 
sneer  at  the  Church  vote.  It  ought  to  go 
into  all  these  realms  and  speak  to  all  of  these 
occasions — of  that  there  is  no  doubt;  but  it 
can  go  and  can  speak  at  best  only  as  a  com- 
rade, and  generally  only  as  a  servant.  And 
it  is  the  open  secret  of  us  all  that  in  any 
movement  for  civic  righteousness  we  count 
it  the  better  wisdom  to  avoid  the  impres- 
sion that  such  movement  originates  with  the 
Church.  It  can  speak  with  authority  only 
on  the  things  of  God;  and  the  deeper  the 
things,  the  more  vital  are  they  to  the  life  of 
men  indifferent  to  them,  and  the  more 
authoritatively  can  it  speak. 

This  generation  past,  however,  has  seen 
the  rise  and  vogue  of  a  school  of  preaching 
which  has  too  much  seized  on  one  element  in 
the  gospel  and  has  emphasized  it  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  all  others;  it  has  seized  and  em- 
phasized the  message  of  tenderness,  and  has 
talked  of  the  wooing  note  and  the  appeal  of 
love,  and  has  rhapsodized  about  loving  men 
into  the  Kingdom.  It  has  clothed  its  strained 
appeal  in  tears  and  pathetic  illustrations 
and  sobbing  tones  till  a  real  man  could  find 


228  THE  OLD  FAITH 

little  to  stir  him  to  worthy  convictions  or 
conduct.  Underneath  a  wholesale  senti- 
mentalism  the  sword  of  the  Lord  has  been 
lost ;  the  word  of  command  has  been  drowned 
in  tears  of  entreaty;  and  one  would  think 
the  Christian  life  was  of  strange  and  doubt- 
ful value  when  it  must  coax  and  plead  its 
place  before  men  in  such  a  fashion.  The 
prophets  entreat,  but  the}^  thunder  as  well; 
they  invite,  but  they  command  with  a  shout 
and  a  summons.  John  the  Baptist  will  cry, 
"Behold,  the  Lamb  of  God,  that  taketh  away 
the  sin  of  the  world !"  but  you  can  hear  him 
driving  home  to  the  curious  and  impetuous 
multitudes  in  which  most  of  us  would  have 
found  much  comfort  to-day,  the  sterner 
epithet  and  question:  "Ye  offspring  of 
vipers,  who  hath  warned  you  to  flee  from  the 
wrath  to  come?"  There  is  no  sob  in  his  throat 
when  he  preaches ;  it  was  a  Kingdom  at  hand 
and  the  authority  of  the  Kingdom  that  at- 
tracted and  subdued  the  multitudes  which 
thronged  to  his  ministry.  Jesus  weeps  over 
Jerusalem;  but  you  can  hear  beside  his  sor- 
row a  whole  chapter  of  woes  and  warnings, 
and  the  relentless  authority  of  moral  judg- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  229 

ment  beats  through  all  the  New  Testament. 
I  do  not  find  Simon  Peter  wooing  men  at 
Pentecost.  "Ye  denied  the  Holy  and  Right- 
eous One,  and  asked  for  a  murderer  to  be 
granted  unto  you,  and  killed  the  Prince  of 
hfe  .  .  .  Repent!"  That  is  his  message.  You 
can  discern  great  tenderness  in  our  brother 
Paul,  but  you  will  find  no  lightening  of  the 
stress  of  authority  in  all  he  has  to  say.  "See- 
ing ye  .  .  .  judge  yourselves  unworthy  of 
eternal  life,  lo,  we  turn  to  the  Gentiles." 
Saint  John  is  not  for  nothing  called  the 
Divine,  and  there  is  a  strain  of  compassion 
that  runs  like  music  through  all  he  writes; 
but  he  has  sharp  discriminations.  "There  is 
a  sin  unto  death :  not  concerning  this  do  I  say 
that  he  should  make  request."  "We  know 
that  we  are  of  God,  and  the  whole  world  lieth 
in  the  evil  one."  The  hesitant  and  over- 
courteous  modern  preaching  which,  as  Hugh 
Black  condenses  it,  announces  that  "If  you 
do  not  repent  and  believe,  as  it  were,  you 
may  be  damned,  so  to  speak,"  has  no  warrant 
in  the  New  Testament  and  no  recommenda- 
tion in  its  results. 

The  age  which  has  so  rejected  authority 


230  THE  OLD  FAITH 

needs  it  now  more  than  ever ;  not  the  author- 
ity of  an  institution,  though  even  that  would 
be  preferable  to  the  license  into  which  society 
seems  to  have  fallen,  but  the  insistent  and 
undeniable  authority  of  moral  obligation 
and  the  inevitable  command  of  the  New 
Testament  and  Christ.  One  of  our  religious 
papers  some  years  ago  published  a  simple 
story  of  two  young  men  returning  from  a 
lecture  against  Christianity  delivered  by  a 
noted  infidel.  One  of  them  said,  "Well,  he 
swept  everything  before  him  to-night,  didn't 
he?"  The  other  answered,  "There  was  one 
thing  he  did  not  touch."  "What  was  it?" 
"My  mother's  religion."  If  you  will  give  to 
that  invincible  experience  an  adequate  ex- 
pression; if  you  will  make  vocal  the  expe- 
rience of  the  vast  majority  of  the  men  and 
women  of  God,  it  will  be  the  note  of  com- 
mand. It  does  not  plead  with  men  to  be 
deaf  to  the  words  of  the  infidel;  it  thunders 
its  authority  over  life  and  into  the  souls  of 
men  so  imperatively  that  the  onset  of  unbe- 
lief does  not  even  make  its  voice  to  be  heard 
amid  the  higher  summons  and  appeal. 

What  we  need,  as  preachers,  in  order  to 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  231 

preach  once  more  the  gospel  of  authority  and 
command,  is,  if  not  a  new,  at  least  a  revised 
conception  of  God  and  of  Christ. 

I  do  not  mean  to  intimate  that  our  age  is 
intentionally  atheistic.  As  Dr.  W.  H.  P. 
Faunce,  in  his  Cole  lectures,  said.  Men 
"grant  the  theistic  argument,  but  live  an 
atheistic  life."  "It  is  not  the  denial  of  God," 
said  he,  "that  ails  our  generation,  it  is  the 
slow  fading  of  the  vivid  sense  of  God  out  of 
men's  lives."  ^  The  generation  in  which  we 
live  has  watched  the  universe  expand  so 
wonderfully,  has  seen  the  stars  multiply  and 
the  solar  spaces  deepen  past  all  comprehen- 
sion, and  human  history  immeasurably 
lengthen  so  that  the  six  thousand  years  of 
our  fathers  are  but  a  holiday  amid  the  mil- 
lenniums that  have  passed  over  earth;  and 
its  thought  of  God  has  not  kept  pace.  Its 
world  to-day  is  too  big  for  its  God  of  yester- 
day and  it  has  no  other  God.  John  Fiske 
has  somewhere  written  that  as  a  child,  when- 
ever the  word  "God"  was  mentioned  he  saw 
"the  image  of  a  venerable  bookkeeper  with 
white,  flowing  beard,  standing  behind  a  high 

1  What  Does  Christianity  Mean?  p.  61. 


232  THE  OLD  FAITH 

desk  and  writing  down  the  bad  deeds  of 
John  Fiske."  Many  a  child's  notions  of  God 
have  been  of  a  gigantic  man  dressed  after 
the  fashion  of  the  men  in  the  Dore  illustra- 
tions in  the  family  Bible,  sitting  on  a  co- 
lossal throne  with  uncountable  myriads  of 
people  all  in  robes  bowing  perpetually  be- 
fore him.  To  hold  such  conceptions  now,  or 
the  conceptions  which  have  developed  from 
them  by  the  mental  discarding  of  the  details 
of  clothes  and  occupation,  to  hold  even  the 
saner  conceptions  of  God  which  honest  but 
more  limited  knowledge  of  the  world  im- 
posed, is  now  impossible  in  a  world  which 
has  been  as  magnified  as  modern  science  has 
magnified  ours;  and  unconsciously,  but  no 
less  fatally,  for  much  of  the  present  genera- 
tion "God  is  lost  among  his  stars.'*  This,  of 
course,  is  not  the  place  for  the  formation  of 
an  exact  and  preachable  and  adequate  doc- 
trine of  God;  but  this  much  is  not  out  of 
place,  that  the  lesson  to  be  learned  from  the 
failures  of  Herbert  Spencer  and  the  success 
of  Bergson,  from  the  dust  of  What-Is- 
Christianity  ?  controversy,  from  the  modern- 
ist movement  in  European  Romanism  and 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  233 

the  philosophical  analyses  of  Eucken,  is  that 
humanity  is  searching  for  a  greater  concep- 
tion of  God.  The  pulpit  of  the  age  is  facing 
a  task  of  reinterpretation,  the  beginning  and 
the  end  of  which,  whatever  may  be  the  read- 
justments of  thought  which  a  reverent 
science  finds  necessary,  we  have  in  the 
Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  To  rein- 
terpret God  in  terms  of  personality,  so  great, 
so  inevitable,  so  commanding,  as  to  press 
down  upon  the  moral  life  of  men  with  the 
inexorable  authority  of  a  living  presence, 
that  is  the  task  far  back  at  the  beginning  of 
whatever  evangelism  the  preacher  may  covet 
for  special  occasions  and  specific  opportu- 
nities. 

That  means  inevitably  that  a  more  virile 
conception  of  Christ  is  needed  than  has  been 
preached  in  many  pulpits.  "Nobody,"  as  Dr. 
Denney  has  said,  "has  any  right  to  preach 
who  has  not  mighty  affirmations  to  make 
concerning  God's  Son,  Jesus  Christ."  ^  No 
reference  is  intended  here  to  the  philosophic 
problems  of  the  incarnation  as  they  are  re- 
newed by  the  later  readings  of  science,  but, 

1  Second  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  Expositor's  Bible,  p.  41. 


234  THE  OLD  FAITH 

more  practically,  the  representation  of  the 
character  of  the  Jesus  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, who  is  the  most  virile  figure  in  history 
when  the  New  Testament  is  read  aright.  "I 
came  not  to  send  peace,  but  a  sword," 
is  one  of  the  unmistakable  words  of  Christ, 
but  we  have  let  it  drift  almost  entirely  out 
of  our  estimate  of  his  character.  We  have 
spoken  and  written  and  read  so  much  of  the 
tenderer  qualities  of  Jesus  that  we  have  for- 
gotten the  heroic  in  him.  He  has  been  made 
so  much  the  Man  of  Sorrows  that  we  have 
lost  sight  of  the  Son  of  God  with  power. 
But  if  one  will  put  away  his  latent  precon- 
ceptions of  the  effeminate  Christ,  formed 
largely  by  lifelong  acquaintance  with  senti- 
mental imaginations  of  sacred  art  and  mushy 
verses  of  too  many  of  our  sacred  songs;  if 
one  will  read  the  Gospels  with  an  eye  open 
to  the  facts  before  him  there,  he  will  see  a 
figure  vastly  different  from  that  which  artists 
and  song-mongers  have  produced.  He  will 
see  a  man  sitting  in  front  of  his  neighbors — 
the  fiercest  tribunal  of  personal  character 
and  the  severest  test  of  personal  fortitude — 
in  the  synagogue,  and  reading  a  prophecy 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  235 

of  their  anticipated  Messiah,  and  then  with 
all  the  sublimer  and  inspiring  reaches  of  that 
rich  national  tradition  in  their  minds,  charg- 
ing against  all  the  prejudices  of  acquaint- 
anceship and  familiarity  by  saying,  "To-day 
hath  this  scripture  been  fulfilled  in  your 
ears."  He  will  see  a  man  walking  boldly 
into  the  temple  amid  officers  duly  appointed 
and  in  the  heart  of  a  fellowship  of  unscru- 
pulous gain,  bound  together  by  the  bonds  of 
self-defense  and  personal  profit,  swinging 
his  lash  about  him,  overturning  tables  and 
driving  the  frightened,  angered  company 
before  him  as  he  would  drive  a  panic-stricken 
flock.  He  will  see  a  man  facing  enemies 
whom  he  knows  to  be  pitiless,  unscrupulous, 
and  bent  upon  his  death,  and  his  words  hiss 
like  another  whiplash  as  he  lays  bare  their 
inmost  thoughts  and  character — "Woe  unto 
you,  scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypocrites!"  He 
will  see  a  man  coming  out  of  a  garden  at 
midnight,  with  the  marks  of  some  sublime 
and  unutterable  tragedy  upon  his  face,  meet- 
ing a  mob  with  staves  and  sullen  voices  and 
the  ominous  flicker  of  swinging  lanterns, 
saying,   "I   am  he."     He  will  see   a  man 


236  THE  OLD  FAITH 

standing  before  a  magistrate  brutalized 
by  race  and  profession  and  long  since 
calloused  to  the  finer  feelings  of  compas- 
sion, hearing  outside  the  shouts  of  men 
that  clamor  for  his  death;  and  to  a  specious 
question  he  deigns  no  reply,  and  to  a  threat 
he  answers,  "Thou  wouldst  have  no  power 
against  me  except  it  were  given  thee."  Can 
it  be  thought  that  the  voice  of  such  a  one  is 
always  a  voice  of  entreaty  ?  God  forbid  that 
the  infinite  compassion  in  the  heart  of  Christ 
should  seem  to  be  slighted,  but  there  is  rea- 
son to  fear  that  religion  too  often  has  been 
made  a  mendicant  when  it  should  go  as  an 
ambassador  with  authority.  We  have  put 
into  our  hymns  a  divine  and  saving  tender- 
ness, but  we  have  too  constantly  forgotten 
that  the  other  side  of  love  is  wrath,  and  that 
love  itself  must  have  a  searching  and  indu- 
bitable sternness.  Christ's  voice  is  a  com- 
mand. There  is  an  end  to  God's  coaxing  of 
men.  He  gives  them  judgment  and  will  and 
a  summons.  Christ  issues  an  order;  you 
may  take  it  or  go.  It  is  a  young  man  of 
wealth  who  came  to  Jesus  to  discern  an  en- 
trance into  the  kingdom  of  God;  one  does 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  237 

not  read  that  Jesus  sought  him  out  and  har- 
ried him  to  his  knees.  He  came  to  Jesus  and 
asked  an  entrance  into  the  kingdom  of  God, 
and  learned  the  meaning  of  it;  and  Jesus 
loved  him.  But  when  the  young  man  turned 
away  sorrowful,  Jesus  did  not  call  him  back. 
An  opportunity  and  an  order !  A  vision  and 
a  summons!  And  for  all  his  sorrow  and  all 
his  self-destruction,  Jesus  had  no  other 
terms. 

With  a  greater  God  in  a  greater  world 
than  ever  before;  and  a  Christ  of  command 
and  summons,  the  pulpit  must  sound  again 
the  older  and  authoritative  note.  The 
evangel  of  our  day  has  stood  too  much  Uke 
one  asking  alms  amid  indifferent  popula- 
tions, calling  mournfully  to  the  passing 
throngs;  and  the  populations  are  still  indif- 
ferent and  the  throngs  still  pass  by.  The 
lust  of  the  eye  and  the  lust  of  the  flesh  and 
the  pride  of  life  still  attract  them ;  an  age  of 
pleasure- seeking  has  made  them  pleasure- 
seekers.  The  break-down  of  the  old  author- 
ity of  the  home,  the  loss  of  the  family  altar 
from  Christian  firesides,  the  multiplication 
and  cheapening  of  amusements,  the  widen- 


238  THE  OLD  FAITH 

ing  scope  of  State  and  municipal  responsi- 
bility and  interest  in  public  welfare,  the  mob- 
passion  of  the  industrial  orders  cherishing  a 
deeply  rooted  hostility  against  the  Church 
with  its  capitalistic  sympathies,  the  fervor  of 
socialistic  ideals  as  a  substitute  for  religious 
experience — all  of  these  go  trampling  hot- 
footed over  the  invitations  of  a  religion  which 
only  invites  and  a  pulpit  which  only  sug- 
gests and  pleads.  The  world,  perhaps  some- 
what unconsciously  but  no  less  inexorably, 
demands  leadership;  it  hears  the  masterful 
voice;  its  Jeremiahs  weary  it  beyond  pa- 
tience, but  its  Amos  and  Saint  Paul  com- 
mand it  at  their  will. 

The  first  note  in  the  preaching  which  con- 
stitutes an  adequate  evangel  for  to-day  is 
this  note  of  command.  But  the  preacher  has 
to  concern  himself  not  only  with  the  tone  of 
his  preaching,  its  atmosphere  and  impress 
of  authority,  but  with  its  impact  on  those 
who  hear.  The  fault  with  all  our  failing  pul- 
pits has  not  been  that  they  have  not  con- 
vinced the  reason.  That,  of  course,  has  been 
too  largely  true,  but  it  is  not  the  fatal  defect. 
The  fatal  defect  is  that  they  have  not  com- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  239 

pelled  the  will.  The  second  feature  of  this 
adequate  evangel  is  that  it  will  command 
men  to  a  worthy  task. 

We  live  in  an  age  which  challenges  all 
the  strength  and  aspiration  of  men;  an  age 
in  which  new  continents  of  opportunity  are 
opening,  new  chivalries  of  public  service  are 
summoning,  new  worlds  of  knowledge  and 
industry  and  achievement  are  inviting.  The 
air  of  our  day  is  electric  with  great  changes ; 
it  stirs  and  stings  like  the  salt  of  the  sea  with 
the  spirit  of  adventure  and  conquest.  There 
is  the  quickening  sense  of  surprises  just 
ahead  vibrant  through  all  our  social  expe- 
rience. Our  standards  have  magnified  with 
the  expanding  of  the  world.  Life,  labor, 
and  possessions,  ambitions  and  lusts  alike 
have  reached  colossal  measurements.  There 
is  the  intoxication  of  a  greater  greatness  in 
our  American  experiment  than  ever  before. 
No  one  alive  to  his  day  can  escape  the  sum- 
mons. The  men  of  the  present  world  have 
lost  nothing  of  the  daring  of  the  old  heroic 
breed.  The  conquest  of  the  arctic,  the 
mastery  of  air,  the  making  of  an  empire,  the 
financing  of  a  nation,  redressing  the  world's 


240  THE  OLD  FAITH 

wrongs,  the  battle  of  an  industrial  order,  the 
wedding  of  the  oceans,  the  enterprises  of 
foreign  missions — these  are  the  tasks  that 
call  once  more  for  the  Viking  spirit,  and 
something  of  the  wine  and  iron  of  them  has 
penetrated  our  commonest  and  most  sordid 
living,  so  that  the  bondmen  of  the  common- 
place redeem  their  drab  and  heavy  days  with 
dreams  of  mighty  things  that  move  around 

them. 

We  are  living,  we  are  dwelling 

In  a  grand  and  awful  time; 
In  an  age  on  ages  telling 

To  be  living  is  sublime. 

The  Church  must  come  with  a  call  to 
something  as  vast  and  commanding;  the 
preaching  and  authority  must  offer  a  per- 
sonal venture  not  out  of  keeping  with  an 
age  of  stupendous  standards  and  activities. 
We  have  made  our  gospel,  oftentimes,  too 
small;  we  have  made  it  an  isolated  expe- 
rience ;  we  have  emphasized  the  shortness  of 
the  step  to  be  taken ;  we  have  wasted  tons  of 
paper  and  oceans  of  breath  in  talking  of  the 
simple  gospel,  when  the  subject  of  it  and  the 
process  of  it  is  the  biggest  business  God 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  241 

could  find  to  do.  What,  then,  shall  be  the 
personal  content  of  the  preaching  to  beget 
an  adequate  evangelism  to-day?  Salvation, 
of  course,  and  salvation  from  sin,  but  salva- 
tion which  issues  not  simply  in  personal 
peace,  or  fearlessness  of  death,  or  a  satisfied 
conscience,  or  an  eternal  heaven,  or  a  busy- 
body sort  of  puttering  at  neighborliness,  but 
salvation  which,  gathering  together  all  of 
these  in  an  ever-deepening  experience  and 
conduct,  issues  progressively  in  what,  in  the 
preaching  of  Phillips  Brooks,  who  saw  the 
truth  from  afar,  would  have  been  the  su- 
preme dignity  of  the  Christian  life. 

Rightly  expounded,  the  supreme  dignity 
of  the  Christian  life  will  open  the  vision  of 
a  task  commensurate  with  the  age  in  which 
we  live,  and  preeminently  commanding  to 
the  most  masterful  of  the  men  who  now  re- 
gard the  business  of  religion  as  a  side  issue 
for  a  woman's  occupation  or  the  protective 
education  of  their  children.  "Thank  God," 
says  Robert  Browning,  "I  find  it  hard  to  be 
a  Christian."  That  is  the  note  of  the  new 
and  winning  evangelism  which  must  be  lifted 
once  again  by  our  Christian  witness  and  for 


242  THE  OLD  FAITH 

which  the  weekly  pulpit  must  prepare.  The 
summons  of  the  commanding  Christ  is  to  a 
conflict  worthy  all  a  man  has.  We  have 
been  more  or  less  unconsciously  paring  our 
conceptions  of  Christian  character,  shrink- 
ing our  standards  of  Christian  conduct, 
dwarfing  our  measurements  of  Christian  ex- 
perience, smoothing  away  the  entrance  to 
the  Christian  society,  until  there  has  been 
little  to  shock  and  grip  men  in  our  appeal. 
"Strait  is  the  gate  and  narrow  the  way," 
said  Jesus;  not,  of  course,  in  the  sense  of 
unyielding  articles  of  creeds  and  relentless 
confessions  of  former  days,  but  in  the  indu- 
bitable distinctness  of  the  Christian  witness 
and  Christian  life.  John  Bunyan,  you  will 
remember,  saw  armed  men  at  a  palace  door, 
and  one  sitting  at  a  table-side  with  his  books 
and  inkhorn  to  take  the  name  of  him  that 
should  enter.  And  he  saw  a  man  of  stout 
countenance  saying,  "Set  down  my  name, 
sir,"  and  then  draw  his  sword  and  charge 
upon  the  armed  men.  And  not  until  he  had 
received  and  given  many  wounds,  did  he 
press  forward  into  the  palace.  John  Bun- 
yan is  doubtless  a  back  number;  but  in  an 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  243 

age  which  challenges  as  our  age  does,  it  is 
that  vision  of  conflict  and  battle  which  men 
must  see  in  the  task  to  which  the  gospel  sum- 
mons the  individual  soul.  Every  now  and 
then  some  benevolent  minded  essayist  sobs 
over  the  loss  of  the  heroic  out  of  life,  and 
the  impending  peril  of  our  becoming  flabby, 
bloodless  folk  like  Mr.  Kipling's  allitera- 
tively  flanneled  fools,  if  the  stimulus  and  in- 
spiration of  war  shall  be  done  away.  As 
these  words  are  being  written,  however,  the 
German  troops  are  entering  Brussels  after 
two  weeks  of  bitterly  contested  struggle,  the 
French  frontier  is  alive  with  allied  forces, 
Russia  is  marching  well-nigh  a  million  men 
on  Prussia,  the  English  navy  patrols  the  seas 
and  English  regiments  are  engaged  on 
foreign  soil,  while  the  Japanese  fleet  awaits 
the  word  which  spreads  the  most  gigantic 
conflict  of  history  from  Europe  to  the  Far 
East.  The  danger  of  an  immediate  end  of 
war  is  not  apparent,  in  spite  of  the  person- 
ally conducted  tours  of  peace  conferences  de 
luxe.  But  if  any  apprehensive  essayist  will 
master  his  fears  long  enough  to  attempt  the 
Christ  life  as  it  is  and  ought  to  be  lived,  with 


244  THE  OLD  FAITH 

its  depths  of  sacrifice  and  its  heights  of  vision 
and  its  breadth  of  consecration  and  its 
length  of  service,  he  will  forget  all  about  the 
necessity  of  war.  That  heroic  note  has  too 
largely  perished  from  our  preaching  and 
conception  of  the  gospel;  and  we  get  in- 
stead, a  Harold  Bell  Wright  with  his  Call- 
ing of  Dan  Matthews,  and  a  Winston 
Churchill  with  his  Inside  the  Cup.  It  is 
reported  that  the  latter  got  his  theology  from 
a  noted  American  churchman,  but  it  is  obvi- 
ous that  he  made  his  preacher  all  by  himself. 
As  for  Harold  Bell  Wright,  he  never  seems 
to  have  glimpsed  the  meaning  of  the  New 
Testament  or  the  Church.  His  Dan  Mat- 
thews is  a  hero  whose  experience  is  so  futile 
that  he  cannot  answer  a  criticism  such  as  the 
average  minister  meets  every  month  of  his 
life ;  a  preacher  who  has  cut  the  cleansing  of 
the  temple  clear  out  of  his  New  Testament, 
who  conceives  it  to  be  heroic  to  whip  phys- 
ically a  man  of  whom  morally  he  is  afraid, 
and  prefers  to  run  away  from  a  Church 
rather  than  spiritualize  it.  Dan  Matthews 
is  Gehazi  among  the  prophets,  and  the  sub- 
title of  the  book  ought  to  be  "The  Spiritual 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  245 

Biography  of  a  Jellyfish."  It  is,  however, 
that  conception  of  Christianity  which  the 
preaching  of  to-day  must  overcome ;  and  we 
have  that  wherewith  to  overcome  it — a  great 
message  of  a  great  task.  Wendell  Phillips 
answered  a  sophomoric  remark  that  Jesus 
was  weak,  by  saying:  "Weak?  Look  at  the 
men  he  has  mastered!"  It  is  a  foolish  boast 
of  a  few  strangers  to  history  and  life  that 
the  progress  of  the  world  in  civilization  and 
its  nobler  ethics  has  been  accomplished  by 
men  who  were  indifferent  to  the  claims  of 
the  Christian  life.  They  are  wont  to  name 
Huxley  and  La  Place  and  Shelley  and  Edi- 
son, and  a  few  of  the  kind,  but  you  can  put 
to-day  beside  an  Edison,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge, 
Sir  William  Ramsay  and  Lord  Kelvin,  the 
three  greatest  names  in  modern  physical 
science.  Reference  has  already  been  made 
to  the  remark  of  President  Remsen,  of  Johns 
Hopkins  University — "The  Christian  life  is 
the  most  scientific  life  I  know  anything  of." 
Beside  an  indifferent  Darwin,  you  can  put 
an  impassioned  Romanes  and  a  sober- 
minded  Wallace.  Outside  the  eddies  in  the 
stream,  the  great  current  of  modern  poetry 


246  THE  OLD  FAITH 

comes  from  the  Christian  Hugo,  Tennyson, 
and  Browning.  For  every  licentious  Lord 
Chesterfield  or  debauched  James  Fox,  you 
have  a  Gladstone  and  Shaftesbury,  a  John 
Hay  and  James  Bryce,  and  taken  by  and 
large,  the  destinies  of  the  world  are  in  the 
hands  of  Christian  men.  When  the  greatest 
American  financier  lay  dead,  they  found  his 
last  will  and  testament  a  witness  to  the 
power  of  Christ  over  his  inner  life.  No  man 
ornaments  the  gospel,  but  great  men  become 
significant  witnesses  to  its  character.  What 
won  these  men?  A  command  and  a  task;  a 
summons  to  big  business  for  their  souls. 
Their  lives  commanded;  they  themselves 
spoke  as  in  authority.  They  were  captured 
only  by  strength  and  surrendered  only  to 
superior  force. 

Among  the  men  of  to-day  the  Church  and 
the  Gospel  have  their  greatest  and  most 
inspiring  opportunity.  Never  were  the 
highways  to  splendid  service  so  many,  or  so 
open ;  never  were  the  areas  of  society  so  un- 
barriered  to  the  influence  of  a  Church  with 
a  command  and  a  task,  and  so  responsive  to 
the  impress  of  a  positive  Christian  spirit. 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  247 

Never  were  the  demands  of  the  world  on 
the  Church  so  imperative  and  high.  And 
where  the  Christian  witness  has  failed  to  win 
the  men  and  women  of  the  age,  it  is  because 
the  Christian  appeal  and  program  have 
seemed  unworthy  the  adventurous  and  mili- 
tant modern  temper.  The  world  is  calling 
for  hard  tasks  and  offering  to  men  and 
women  stupendous  things;  and  it  will  have 
no  gospel  of  an  easy  religion.  To  invite 
men  to  the  Christian  life  and  suggest  that 
it  is  an  easy  and  simple  thing  is  to  win  a  few 
narrow  or  burdened  or  broken  souls  with 
half  a  lie,  but  it  is  inevitably  to  repel  the 
great  mass  of  earnest  folk  who  are  hungry 
for  hard  things  and  looking  for  something 
worth  while. 

When  Lieutenant  Hobson  wanted  seven 
men  to  attempt  with  him  the  sinking  of  the 
Merrimac  at  the  supposedly  certain  loss  of 
their  lives,  the  sailors  of  the  fleet  volunteered 
literally  by  the  hundred  and  had  to  be  chosen 
personally.  And  the  sailors  who  were  not 
chosen  offered  their  wages  for  months,  and 
even  for  the  cruise,  for  the  chance  to  go ;  but 
not  a  man  who  had  been  selected  would  sell 


248  THE  OLD  FAITH 

his  opportunity  of  being  blown  to  death.  It 
was  with  truly  infinite  wisdom  that  Jesus 
set  hard  barriers  in  front  of  the  discipleship. 
He  knew  what  was  in  man.  There  is  a 
Divine  shrewdness  in  the  gospel  of  the 
Cross.  Men  run  from  roses  to  grasp  a 
sword;  they  refuse  to  sit  on  cushions,  but 
will  climb  crosses  with  a  song.  And  that 
gospel  of  the  cross  and  cross-bearing  must 
be  interpreted  in  keeping  with  the  colossal 
spirit  of  the  age  in  which  we  live.  There  is 
a  time  in  every  life  when  the  thought  of  rest 
is  winsome  and  the  vision  of  the  harps  and 
palms  is  like  heartsease  to  the  beleaguered 
and  bewildered  soul.  But  those  are  only 
individual  moods.  For  winning  a  world  and 
capturing  a  generation  and  seizing  on  so- 
ciety and  creating  in  it  a  great  social  ear- 
nestness we  want  no  palms  and  harps,  but  a 
cross  and  a  trumpet.  To  the  note  of  author- 
ity must  be  added  the  command  to  task  as 
the  second  feature  of  the  evangel  adequate 
to  the  day. 

It  would  be  a  signal  failure,  however,  if 
the  impression  were  to  be  left  that  all  the 
winsome  beauty  and  appealing  tenderness  of 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  249 

the  gospel  must  be  thrown  away  as  an  out- 
worn thing.  The  note  of  authority  and  the 
command  to  task  are  the  preeminent  features 
in  the  preaching  of  an  adequate  evangel ;  but 
they  will  be  utterly  unfruitful  if  they  are 
presented  in  a  wholly  stern  and  intolerant 
fashion.  Bugles  command  regiments  to 
charge  on  battle  lines  but  there  is  a  music 
in  them  which  makes  even  battle  sweet. 
W.  H.  Morrison,  in  one  of  his  sermons, 
quotes  an  old  Jewish  legend  that  in  hell 
Satan  was  asked  what  he  missed  most  of  all 
that  he  had  had  in  heaven  before  his  fall; 
and  he  replied,  "I  miss  most  the  sound  of  the 
trumpets  in  the  morning."  The  preaching 
of  to-day  must  command  like  a  trumpet  but 
have  a  music  in  it  like  the  winsomeness  of 
harps.  There  will  be  this  difference,  never- 
theless, between  the  appeal  which  the  gospel 
of  to-day  must  make  and  that  which  for 
several  years  past  has  seemed  so  futile,  it 
will  be  dignified  both  in  source  and  form. 
A  God  as  great  as  ours,  a  Christ  as  imperial 
as  ours,  a  life  as  masterful  as  we  must  preach 
the  Christian  life  to  be,  will  have  a  tender- 
ness and  consolation  in  their  appeal  in  keep- 


250  THE  OLD  FAITH 

ing  with  greatness  and  the  mastery  and  the 
supremacy  to  which  they  call.  I  saw  and 
heard  one  of  the  foremost  of  our  Methodist 
preachers  move  a  great  audience  to  tears  by 
a  story  of  the  faithfulness  of  a  she-dog;  and 
from  those  stirred  emotions  he  thought  and 
seemed  to  make  much  headway  in  the  pre- 
sentation of  Christ.  It  was  a  good  story, 
but  you  thought  of  the  dog  and  not  of  Christ, 
and  the  mood  it  evoked  and  the  imagination 
it  aroused,  were  very  far  below  the  mighty 
theme  of  the  saving  Son  of  God.  The  eif  ect 
produced  was  evanescent — it  was  a  specious 
tenderness  thrust  on  those  who  heard  by  a 
tricky  appeal,  not  to  their  need  or  the  char- 
acter of  God  or  the  ministry  of  Christ, 
but  to  their  pity;  and  the  preacher  mistook 
that  transient  sentiment  for  the  hallowing 
emotion  which  ought  to  rise  within,  from 
sober  contemplation  of  the  profound  and 
saving  tenderness  of  God.  The  peril  of  such 
sentimentalism  is  that  it  deadens  the  souls 
of  men  to  the  legitimate  and  constructive 
appeal  of  the  truth;  and  we  get  therefrom  a 
more  hopeless  kind  of  "gospel-hardening" 
than  our  fathers  had.    The  third  feature  in 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  251 

the  preaching  which  constitutes  an  adequate 
evangel  will  be  tenderness,  but  a  tenderness 
as  profound  as  the  great  themes  from  which 
it  rises,  as  august  as  the  God  and  the  Christ 
of  whom  it  witnesses,  as  dignified  as  the  con- 
duct of  experience  and  life  to  which  it  in- 
vites. 

These,  briefly  considered,  are  the  features 
of  effective  modern  preaching;  but  they  are 
features  of  manner  rather  than  of  substance, 
marks  of  appeal  rather  than  matter  of 
thought.  They  are  the  qualities  by  which, 
through  subtle  agencies,  the  will  is  cap- 
tured. Before  the  will  stands  the  buttressed 
stronghold  of  the  reason,  which  must  be 
taken,  or  the  response  of  the  will  is  hesitant 
and  temporary,  if  it  responds  at  all.  The 
profound  concern  of  the  preacher  will  be  not 
only  with  the  manner  but  the  matter  of  his 
message,  not  only  How,  but  What  shall  he 
preach? 

What,  then,  will  be  the  kind  of  preaching 
which  is  to  be  at  once  authoritative  and  com- 
manding to  a  task  and  appropriately  tender 
in  its  appeal  ?  It  will  be  what  our  theological 
textbooks  and  lectures  call  doctrinal  preach- 


252  THE  OLD  FAITH 

ing.  It  will  not  reproduce  the  stiffness  of 
theological  methods;  it  will  not  be  the  pre- 
sentation of  sectarian  difference  or  the  expo- 
sition of  fragmentary  topics  offering  hom- 
iletical  ease  and  applicability.  It  will  be 
the  presentation  of  those  great  fundamentals 
of  the  Christian  faith  and  experience  which 
lie  like  the  granite  structure  of  the  range  be- 
neath all  the  spurs  and  peaks  of  separate 
mountain  formations.  The  preaching  which 
permanently  attracts  and  constructs  the 
characters  of  men,  the  preaching  which  meets 
the  basal  need  of  every  changing  social  hour, 
the  preaching  which  has  in  it  most  of  grip 
and  seizure  for  the  spiritually  indifferent,  is 
not,  for  any  considerable  period  or  abiding 
influence,  the  so-called  up-to-date  discus- 
sion of  current  events,  which  has  its  minor 
place  in  the  modern  pulpit,  but  the  incisive 
and  commanding  exposition  of  the  timeless 
truths  of  God  and  the  soul.  The  doctrinal 
content  of  the  preaching  which  inspired  and 
prepared  for  the  great  revival  periods  of  the 
past  has  already  been  suggested:  Luther's 
doctrine  of  justification,  Wesley's  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  Edwards's  of  the  personality 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  253 

of  God,  Finney's  of  divine  retribution;  and 
it  is  still  and  forever  true  that  the  preach- 
ers w^ho  in  their  weekly  pulpits  most  com- 
mand and  capture  men  are  doctrinal  preach- 
ers. Frederick  W.  Robertson,  Guthrie, 
Chalmers,  Bushnell,  Storrs,  Dale,  Bishop 
Simpson,  Bishop  Foster,  Jowett,  Morgan — 
their  sermons  are  drenched  in  great  doctrinal 
affirmations.  We  have  been  for  some  time 
in  a  day  of  so-called  ethical  preaching,  a  day 
in  w^hich  the  Church,  as  never  before,  has 
been  awakened  to  its  ethical  duties;  but  is 
it  not  a  singular  coincidence  that  the  time 
of  the  Church's  greatest  practical  activity  in 
and  for  society  is  the  time  of  its  slightest  hold 
and  smallest  influence  over  the  thinking  and 
conduct  of  society?  The  fault  is  not  with 
the  ethical  conduct  of  the  Church  or  its  new 
crusade  of  social  service ;  it  is  in  the  fact  that 
we  have  not  originated  and  maintained  our 
ethical  activities  in  great  doctrinal  convic- 
tions. The  evangelistic  preachers  of  the 
past  won  their  amazing  victories  over  the 
consciences  and  wills  of  men  by  their  tre- 
mendous proclamation  of  tlie  great  doctrines 
of  the  faith.    And  where  will  you  find  more 


254  THE  OLD  FAITH 

authority,  more  command  and  inspiration, 
more  tenderness  of  appeal  than  in  them? 
What  will  more  subdue  and  invite  a  way- 
ward soul  than  a  commanding  vision  of  the 
character  of  God?  What  will  more  quickly 
win  a  soul  to  penitence  and  prayer  and  sur- 
render than  an  appealing  exposition  of  the 
atonement  in  Christ  ?  What  will  more  surely 
summon  a  man  to  wholesomeness  and  dig- 
nity of  personal  living  than  a  noble  preach- 
ing of  the  incarnation?  What  will  more 
woo  and  win  a  soul  with  a  tenderness  which 
is  not  pretty  but  august  and  splendid,  than 
a  triumphant  declaration  and  defense  of  the 
resurrection  ?  Out  of  what  other  themes  will 
authority  be  so  calmly  voiced,  will  the  stu- 
pendous task  of  Christian  living  so  confi- 
dently assert  itself,  will  a  deep  and  welling 
tenderness  arise  to  open  the  spirit  of  a  man  to 
the  advent  of  the  Spirit  of  God?  To  unfold, 
not  in  piecemeal  fragments  but  in  a  sober 
yet  illumined  message,  the  fact  and  conse- 
quence of  sin  as  science  joins  with  revelation 
in  disclosing  it ;  to  take  of  the  reenf  orcements 
of  a  physicist  like  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  pub- 
lish the  New  Testament  doctrine  of  immor- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  255 

tality  with  the  dews  of  a  new  certainty  upon 
it ;  to  reread  the  New  Testament  in  the  hght 
of  Josiah  Royce,  and  Henri  Bergson,  as  well 
as  Orr  and  Denney  and  William  Newton 
Clarke,  and  Haring,  and  to  bring  therefrom 
not  a  recurrent  simple  gospel  but  a  great 
and  compelling  evangel  of  the  spiritual 
order ;  in  other  words,  to  light  the  ponderous 
and  majestic  doctrines  of  the  faith  with  the 
glow  of  the  newest  thinking  and  at  the  chal- 
lenge of  an  expanding  world — that  is  the 
surest  constitution  of  an  evangel  to  the  age 
which  is  more  and  more  impatient  of  the 
fragmentary  and  the  superficial. 

This  is  a  great  task;  and  who  is  sufficient 
for  these  things?  But  the  writer  is  con- 
vinced that  our  preaching  has  failed  of  the 
evangelistic  note  because  we  have  cultivated 
the  note  rather  than  the  evangel;  we  have 
been  more  intent  on  forms  and  phases  than 
on  the  fundamental  gospel  we  are  commis- 
sioned to  proclaim.  Whatever  place  the 
evangelism  of  special  occasions  or  the  con- 
tinuous Sunday  night  service  may  occupy, 
our  preaching  which  prepares  and  inspires 
it  must  be  not  a  matter  simply  of  invitation 


256  THE  OLD  FAITPI 

and  altar  and  inquiry  rooms;  it  must  aim  at 
the  creation  in  society  of  a  spirit  for  God  as 
social  and  felt  and  fervent  as  our  present 
gracious  spirit  for  humanity.  The  contrast 
which  has  shocked  and  baffled  us  has  been 
the  vision  of  society  as  a  unit  pouring  its 
energies  of  mind  and  heart  and  hand  into 
the  ethical  reconstruction  of  life  and  almost 
as  a  unit  indifferent  to  the  Bible,  scornful 
of  the  Church,  and  impatient  of  what  has 
seemed  the  limited  and  fragmentary  salva- 
tion proclaimed  by  the  pulpit.  We  are  to 
shape  the  world  into  the  kingdom  of  God, 
to  fashion  an  indifferent  yet  honest  genera- 
tion into  a  holy  priesthood.  One  may  con- 
cur in  any  program  of  special  features,  in 
any  use  of  particular  periods,  or  any  employ- 
ment of  unstereotyped  methods  for  the 
awakening  and  capturing  of  men  and  women 
to  the  Kingdom.  The  present  chapter  has 
not  touched  on  these  more  familiar  elements 
in  our  customary  discussions  of  the  theme, 
though  they  have  their  place.  But  these  will 
have  large  and  constant  success  only  as  they 
are  projections  in  special  directions  and  at 
special  occasions  of  the  greater  and  coordi- 


IN  THE  NEW  DAY  257 

nated  body  of  preaching  dominant  in  the 
steady  business  of  the  regular  pulpit;  and 
the  more  pressing  task  upon  us  who  are  im- 
patient for  the  evangelistic  result  is  the  cul- 
tivation of  this  greater  preaching  of  the 
greater  truth  in  the  sublime  routine  of  the 
Sabbath  ministry.  Preaching,  not  by  a 
method  or  a  phase  of  service,  but  as  the 
presentation  from  the  pulpit  in  forms  an- 
swering the  challenge  and  appropriate  to  the 
spirit  of  the  age,  of  the  full  body  of  Chris- 
tian truth ;  for  the  creation  in  the  individual, 
but,  more  broadly,  for  the  maintenance  in 
society  as  a  unit,  of  the  perpetual  acknowl- 
edgment of  and  passion  for  God — that  is 
the  substance  of  an  adequate  evangel  for  the 
day  in  which  we  live. 

And  the  author  of  these  humble  pages 
dares  to  believe  he  hears  the  footsteps  of  the 
coming  Kingdom  marching  grandly  down 
the  files  of  time  that  is  to  be,  and  not  now  far 
off.  It  seems  to  him  that  we  men  of  the  pul- 
pit are  continually  finding  our  enduring 
message  in  the  deeper  things  of  God;  that 
more  and  more  the  day  of  the  sensationalist 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  dilettant  on  the 


258  THE  OLD  FAITH 

other,  is  passing;  that  more  and  more  our 
churches  are  returning  to  the  older  tradition 
and  demanding  that  those  who  lead  them 
shall  be  men  of  the  pulpit  rather  than  of  the 
parlor  and  the  marketplace.  And  more  and 
more  in  the  earnestness  of  multitudes  of  men 
and  women  unidentified  with  the  institutions 
of  religion,  but  thronging  to  the  message  of 
commanding  preachers,  as  well  as  in  the 
quieter  loyalty  of  stable  congregations  in 
comfortable  environments,  he  seems  to 
recognize  the  heartening  spirit  of  inquiry 
and  interest  in  and  response  to  the  procla- 
mation of  the  deepest  truths  of  the  New 
Testament  and  the  spiritual  life. 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Libraries 


Theological  Seminarv 


1    1012 


01249  8426 


Date  Due 

AP?:Vfj| 

1 

f 

